International Workshop on Ontology Modularity, Contextuality, and Evolution (WOMoCoE 2016)

In actual applications, it is impractical to treat knowledge as a monolithic and unchanging structure. Partitioning knowledge into modular structures is central to organize optimal knowledge repositories: from their design, to their management, from their maintenance to their use for knowledge sharing. Understanding, representing and reasoning about the context of the different knowledge sources is essential for their correct exploitation and for reliable and effective reasoning in changing situations. The correct acquisition of new knowledge, the evolution of underlying ontologies and the updates in knowledge sources are important factors that influence the quality of stored knowledge over time.

The International Workshop on Ontology Modularity, Contextuality, and Evolution (WOMoCoE 2016) builds on the success of the previous editions of the WoMO and ARCOE­Logic workshop series. It offers the ground to practitioners and researchers to discuss current work on theoretical and practical aspects on the topics of modularity, contextuality, and evolution of ontologies and knowledge resources. It aims to bring together an interdisciplinary crowd of researchers from various subareas of AI and knowledge representation, semantic web, linked data knowledge engineers, as well as researchers from philosophy, logic, cognitive science, and linguistics and from various application domains.

WOMoCoE 2016 is part of the second edition of Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO-15) which combines five exciting ontology-centered workshops at FOIS 2016.

Important dates

Submission (abstracts): April 19 May 3, 2016
Submission (full papers): April 25 May 9, 2016
Notification: May 12 May 30, 2016
FOIS early registration: June 5, 2016
Camera ready: May 31 June 15, 2016
Workshop: July 6, 2016

Topics

The topics of interest are split into Modularity, Context and Evolution tracks.

Modularity Track. Modularity is an important enabling technology for knowledge repositories and collaborative knowledge development environments. In formal and applied ontology, modularity is central to reduce the complexity of designing and understanding ontologies, and to facilitate ontology verification, reasoning, maintenance and integration. This track includes a broad range of topics including modular aspects of knowledge representation, reasoning and logic (description logics, first­ order logic, rule­ based reasoning, automated theorem proving), modularity in web knowledge repositories and information systems (ontologies, semantic web, linked data) as well as aspects of modularity in philosophy, logic, cognitive science, linguistics and various application domains.

  • Philosophical and cognitive aspects of modularity​
  • Theory, algorithms & implementations
    • Notions of modularity such as conservative extensions, locality­based modules, reachability modules, etc.
    • Module extraction and decomposition algorithms
    • Logical relations between modules and modular ontology languages
  • Modularity in reasoning
    • Modules for incremental and distributed reasoning
    • Modularity for schema reasoning (e.g. classification) or data reasoning (e.g. query answering)
    • Modularity and explanations
    • Modularity and context­based reasoning
  • Modularity in ontology engineering
    • Reuse, publishing/sharing, and linking of modules
    • Application of modules in collaborative ontology engineering
    • Ontology repositories and libraries
    • Ontology design patterns
    • Use of modules for ontology visualization
  • Modular ontologies in applications
    • Case studies and evaluations
    • Issues in particular domains, e.g., life sciences, physical sciences, geosciences, social sciences, etc.
    • End­user applications

Context Track. Aspects of contextual knowledge representation and reasoning have recently gained a significant amount of interest in Semantic Web (SW), Linked Data (LD), and Ambient Intelligence (AmI). In these and similar areas there is a need to represent and reason over a set of interconnected, heterogeneous and evolving knowledge resources, in the form of SW/LD datasets or sensor data streams. The presence of context and contextual metadata is an important factor in defining effective methods of reasoning and querying over such data. There is the need for new techniques to handle such type of data and to scale to ever increasing amounts of resources. But there are also opportunities to build novel applications that combine and reuse semantic data across different domains. This track welcomes submissions on the topics below as well as on their intersection and other topics related to acquisition, representation, reasoning with context and its applications.

  • Formal aspects of context acquisition, representation and interpretation
  • Context in applications
    • Matching, combining and disambiguating knowledge sources via contextual information
    • Contextual search and information retrieval
    • Modelling of user’s, agent’s, and application’s context
    • Tools and methodologies for handling context
  • Context and reasoning
    • Effective reasoning with contextual knowledge
    • Exploiting context in inconsistency and uncertainty handling
    • Distributed evaluation of contexts
  • Context and ontologies
    • Ontologies for modeling and reasoning about contextual information
    • Representing context in Semantic Web standards
    • Enriching Linked Data with contextual information
    • Applications of contextual knowledge representation and reasoning in Semantic Web and beyond

Evolution Track. Ontology evolution is closely related to both contextuality and modularity of knowledge. It refers the process of modifying an existing ontology, which may be triggered due to a change in context, but also during extraction or manipulation of modules in an ontology. When ontologies are evolved, it may be useful to archive different versions effectively and to develop also reasoning and querying techniques that can take into account also past versions of the ontology when needed. These issues are ever more important today with the growth of resources published under the linked open data, and similar initiatives. This track welcomes submissions on the following, but also other related topics:

  • Theoretical foundations
    • Definitions and algorithms for belief change in ontologies
    • Reasoning and planning in ontology evolution
  • Evolution in ontology management
    • Ontology merging
    • Ontology archiving and versioning
    • Ontology mapping and alignment
    • Knowledge integration
    • Ontology fault diagnosis and repair
    • Modelling of persistent agents in changing environments
  • Ontology evolution in applications
    • Management of SW/LD knowledge resources
    • Ontology evolution and update in specific application domains

Submission

Submission of regular and position papers is possible. Regular papers include research reports and surveys. WOMoCoE also welcomes reports on significant work in progress which has already achieved some interesting partial results, as well as papers recently submitted or published elsewhere as long as their topic is in line with the workshop. Regular papers should be in 9–12 pages in length including references. Position papers are intended for presentation of interesting new open issues and challenges, and opinions on the status of the field. Position papers are limited to 4–5 pages including references. All papers must include an abstract of no more than 300 words and be formatted using the IOS Press style:

Papers should be submitted via EasyChair:

All submitted papers will be subject to blind (but not double-blind) peer-review process. Accepted papers will be presented either as oral presentations or as posters, depending on the choice of the program committee.

All accepted papers will be made available in the form of informal online joint workshop proceedings for all JOWO 2016 workshops. For more information refer to JOWO 2016.

Invited Speaker

Jérôme Euzenat
senior research scientist
INRIA Grenoble Rhône-Alpes
France

Special Issue

We are in negotiation with the Semantic Web Journal with the aim to publish a special issue with the extended versions of the best papers form the workshop. These papers will have to pass a second round of review. More information will be posted soon.

Student Grants

We invite full time students that are (co-)authors of one of the accepted papers to WOMOCOE to apply for travel grants. Grant applications must be sent to:

Applications should include: copy of a student ID or evidence of professional status, a letter of support from the supervisor commenting on the role of the student in the paper and availability of other fundings for travel expenses.

Organization

Workshop Co-Chairs

Stefano Borgo
Laboratory for Applied Ontology
CNR, Trento, Italy
Loris Bozzato
Data and Knowledge Management Unit,
Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy
Chiara Del Vescovo
BBC Platform API,
Salford, United Kingdom
Martin Homola
Comenius University in Bratislava,
Slovakia

Program Committee

  • Ivan Varzinczak, University of Artois, France
  • Grigoris Antoniou, University of Huddersfield, UK
  • Michael Gruninger, University of Toronto, Canada
  • George Vouros, University of Piraeus, Greece
  • Agnieszka Lawrynowicz, Poznan University of Technology, Poland
  • Eva Blomqvist, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Anni-Yasmin Turhan, University of Oxford, UK
  • Vincenzo Maltese, University of Trento, Italy
  • Francisco Martin-Recuerda, Technical University of Madrid, Spain
  • Dmitry Tsarkov, University of Manchester, UK
  • Thomas Schneider, University of Bremen, Germany
  • Valeria De Paiva, University of Birmingham, UK
  • Till Mossakowski, University of Magdeburg, Germany
  • Denis Ponomaryov, A.P.Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems, Russia
  • Theodore Patkos, FORTH, Greece
  • Daniele Porello, ISTC CNR, Italy
  • Adila A. Krisnadhi, Wright State University, US

Previous Workshops

The WOMoCoE workshop originated as a collaboration between WoMO and ARCOE-Logic series. The following workshops were previously held:

WoMO 2015
was co-located with the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-15), Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 2015
ARCOE-Logic 2014
was held in conjunction with the 19th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2014), Linköping, Sweden, November 2014
WoMO 2014
was co-located with the 8th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, FOIS 2014. It was held in Rio de Janeiro, September 22-26, 2014.
ARCOE-LogIC 2013
was held in conjunction with 12th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (LPNMR-2013), Corunna, Spain, September 2013
WoMO 2013
was co-located with the 12th International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning, LPNMR-13, Corunna, Spain, September 2013.
ARCOE-12
was held at European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-12), Montpellier, France, August 2012
WoMO 2012
was co-located with the 7th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, FOIS 2012, Graz, Austria, July 2012.
ARCOE-11
was held at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2011),Barcelona, Spain, July 2011
Log-IC 2011
was held in conjunction with International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (LPNMR 2011), Vancouver, Canada, May 2011
WoMO 2011
was co-located with ESSLLI 2011, Ljubljana, Slovenia (week 2), following an introductory ESSLLI course on notions of modularity in ontologies (week 1).
ARCOE-10
was held at the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-10), Lisbon, Portugal, August 2010
WoMO 2010
was co-located with FOIS 2010, Toronto, Canada.
ARCOE-09
the first Workshop on Automated Reasoning about Context and Ontology Evolution was held at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2009), Pasadena, California, USA, July 2009
Log-IC 2009
the first International Workshop on Logic-based Interpretation of Context: Modeling and Applications was held at the International Conference on Logic Programming and Nonmonotonic Reasoning (LPNMR’09), Postdam, Germany, September 2009
WORM 2008
was co-located with ESWC 2008, Tenerife, Spain, entitled `Ontologies: Reasoning and Modularity’, with a special emphasis on reasoning methods.
WoMO 2007
was co-located with K-CAP 2007, Whistler BC, Canada.
WoMO 2006
the first Workshop on Modular Ontologies, co-located with ISWC 2006, Athens, Georgia, USA.