[CfP] 10th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2018), September 17-21, 2018, Cape Town, South Africa

[Karl Hammar]

10th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS)
2018, September 17-21, 2018, Cape Town, South Africa

http://fois2018.cs.uct.ac.za/
http://www.iaoa.org/fois/2018.html

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DEFINITION AND SCOPE
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The advent of complex information systems which rely on robust,
coherent and formal representations of their subject matter, led in
the last 25 years to the exploitation of ontological analysis and
ontology-based representation. 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 is now a research focus in such diverse domains as
conceptual modeling, database design, knowledge engineering, software
engineering, organizational modeling, artificial intelligence,
robotics, computational linguistics, the life sciences,
bioinformatics, geographic information science, 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, to provide a solid foundation for
their work.

The FOIS conference is a meeting point for researchers from all
disciplines with an interest in formal ontology. The conference
encourages submission of new and high quality articles on both
theoretical issues and concrete applications. As in previous years,
FOIS 2018 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 aiming 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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SATELLITE ACTIVITIES
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FOIS 2018 includes a number of additional activities:
http://fois2018.cs.uct.ac.za/?page_id=54

+ a call for workshops (deadline: March 2, see link above)
+ a call for tutorials (deadline: March 2, see link above)
+ a young researchers symposium,
+ a demo and industry track
+ an ontology competition

FOIS is preceded by the 4th Interdisciplinary School on Applied
Ontology: http://isao2018.cs.uct.ac.za/

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SCOPE OF FOIS - TOPICS OF INTEREST
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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
* Top-level vs. domain-specific ontologies
* Role of reference ontologies
* Ontology integration and alignment
* Formal comparison among ontologies
* Relationship with cognition, language, semantics, context

Domain-specific ontologies
* Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion etc.)
* Ontology of biological reality (organisms, genes, proteins, cells etc.)
* Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions,
emotions, perceptions etc.)
* Ontology of artifacts, functions, capacities and roles
* Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms,
social relationships, artistic expressions 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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FORMAT
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Submitted papers must not exceed 14 pages (including the bibliography)
and must include an abstract of no more than 300 words. Papers should
be submitted non-anonymously in PDF format (template from the FOIS
website).
The Easychair submission page can be found at:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fois2018

The proceedings will be published by IOS Press in electronic format
with permanent open access.

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IMPORTANT DATES
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*Call for papers
Paper Submission Deadline: 13 April 2018
Notification: 30 May 2018
Camera-ready papers: 24 June 2018
Conference Dates: 17-21 September 2018

*Call for workshops/tutorials
Proposal Submission: 2 March 2018
Notification: 15 March 2018

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CONFERENCE ORGANISATION
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General Chair:
Oliver Kutz (KRDB, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy)

Program Chairs:
Stefano Borgo (Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA), ISTC CNR Trento IT)
Pascal Hitzler (Data Semantics (DaSe) Laboratory, Wright State University, USA)

Local Organization:
Maria Keet (University of Cape Town, South Africa)