Call for Papers: FOIS 2014, September 22-25 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

[Janna Hastings]

CALL FOR PAPERS

8th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems FOIS
2014, September 22-25, 2014, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

http://fois2014.inf.ufes.br/p/home.html
http://www.iaoa.org/fois/

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DEFINITION AND SCOPE
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Ontology, originally a fundamental part of philosophical enquiry, is
concerned with the analysis and categorization of what exists. In recent
years, however, a complementary focus of ontological inquiry gained
significant momentum fueled by the advent of complex information systems
which rely on robust and coherent, formal representations of their subject
matter. The systematic study of such representations, their axiomatics,
their corresponding reasoning techniques and their relations to cognition
and reality, are at the center of the modern discipline of formal ontology.

Formal ontology in this modern sense is now a research focus in such diverse
domains as conceptual modeling, database design, software engineering,
organizational modeling, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics,
the life sciences, bioinformatics, geographic information science, knowledge
engineering, information retrieval, and the Semantic Web. Researchers in all
these areas increasingly recognize the need for serious engagement with
ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and
relations making up their respective domains of enquiry, in providing a
solid foundation for their work.

The FOIS conference is designed to provide a meeting point for researchers
from all disciplines with an interest in formal ontology. The conference
encourages submission of high quality articles on both theoretical issues
and concrete applications. As in previous years, FOIS 2014 is intended as a
nexus of interdisciplinary research and communication.

FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association for
Ontology and its Applications (IAOA, website: http://iaoa.org/), which is a
non-profit organization the purpose of which is to promote interdisciplinary
research and international collaboration at the intersection of
philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer
science, as well as in the applications of ontological analysis to
conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering, knowledge management,
information-systems development, library and information science, scientific
research, and semantic technologies in general.

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FORMAT
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FOIS is a growing conference, and the 2014 edition will add a number of new
facets, including 

+ a formal ontology competition,
+ an open call for workshops, and
+ a young researchers symposium.

It will moreover be directly preceded by the Second Interdisciplinary Summer
School on Ontological Analysis, to be held in Vitoria, Brazil, between
September 15-19.

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SCOPE OF FOIS - TOPICS OF INTEREST
------------------------------

We seek high-quality papers on a wide range of topics. Concerning scope, an
ideal FOIS paper will address both content-related ontological issues and
their formal modeling, as well as their impact and relevance for some
aspects of information systems.

Areas of particular interest to the conference include the following:

Foundational Issues
* Kinds of entities: particulars/universals, continuants/occurrents,
abstracta/concreta, dependent entities/independent entities, natural
objects/artifacts
* Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence,
constitution, causality, subsumption, instantiation
* Vagueness and granularity
* Space, time, and change

Methodological issues
* Role of reference ontologies
* Top-level vs. domain-specific ontologies
* Relationship with cognition, language and semantics
* Formal comparison among ontologies
* Ontology integration and alignment 

Domain-specific ontologies
* Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, etc.)
* Ontology of biological reality (genes, proteins, cells, organisms, etc.)
* Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions, emotions,
percepts, etc.)
* Ontology of artifacts, functions and roles
* Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms, social
relationships, artistic expressions, languages, etc.)

Applications:
* Ontology-driven information systems design
* Ontological foundations for conceptual modeling
* Knowledge management
* Qualitative modeling
* Computational linguistics
* Information retrieval
* Semantic Web, Web services
* Business modeling
* Ontologies for particular scientific disciplines (biology, chemistry,
geography, physics, cognitive sciences, linguistics etc.)
* Ontologies for engineering: shape, form and function, artifacts,
manufacturing, design, architecture, etc. 
* Ontologies for the humanities: arts, cultural studies, history, law,
literature, philosophy, etc.

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IMPORTANT DATES
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Paper Submission Deadline: March 3, 2014
Notification: May 5, 2014
Camera-ready papers: June 30, 2014
Conference Dates: September, 22-25, 2014

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
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Submitted papers must not exceed 14 pages (including the bibliography) and
include an abstract of no more than 300 words. Papers should be submitted
non-anonymously and be prepared in PDF format in accordance with the IOS
formatting guidelines found at

http://www.iospress.nl/service/authors/latex-and-word-tools-for-book-autho
rs/

The Easychair submission page can be found at:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fois2014

As with previous FOIS conferences, the proceedings will be published as a
volume in the IOS Press series 'Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and
Applications'.

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CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
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General Chair: 
Laure Vieu (CNRS, France)

Program Chairs: 
Pawel Garbacz (Catholic University of Lublin, Poland) Oliver Kutz
(University of Bremen, Germany)

Local Organization: 
Giancarlo Guizzardi (Federal University of Espirito Santo Brazil) Renato
Rocha Souza (FGV, Brazil)

Workshops:
Robert Hoehndorf (University of Cambridge, UK)

Ontology Competition:
Till Mossakowski (DFKI Bremen and University of Bremen, Germany)

Early Career Symposium:
Marion Haemmerli (University of Lausanne, Switzerland) Torsten Hahmann
(University of Toronto, Canada) Claudio Masolo (ISTC-CNR, Italy)

Publicity:
Janna Hastings (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK) Fernanda Baiao
(Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)





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Janna Hastings  
      Email: hastings at ebi.ac.uk | Tel: +44 (0)1223 494411 | Fax:+44(0)1223
494468
      Twitter: @jannahastings | Web: www.ebi.ac.uk/~hastings |
Blog:www.bioontology.ch 
Coordinator, Cheminformatics and Metabolism, European Bioinformatics
Institute
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