Information Artifact Ontologies

A Full-Day Workshop organized as part of the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems FOIS 2014

Conference Dates: September 22-25, 2014

Workshop Date: September 22, 2014

Summary

This workshop to be held in conjunction with the FOIS 2014 conference. It is designed to provide a forum for discussing both foundational and practical issues relating to the ontological representation of information artifacts. We welcome three types of submissions: tutorial proposals (1-page), short progress reports (1-page), and longer papers (up to 6 pages).

Background

Information artifacts are artifacts – such as photographs, newspaper articles, entries in databases, computer programs, emails, video clips – which are used in ways that depend on their being about something (having a topic or content or subject-matter). Information artifacts are sometimes used in ways that do not depend on their aboutness (as when a newspaper is used to light a fire). In most cases, however, we care about what information artifacts are about because we exploit this aboutness in achieving our ends.

In addition to their topic (content, aboutness) information artifacts have a variety of further attributes, including format, purpose, evidence, provenance, operational relevance, security markings. Data concerning such attributes (often called ‘metadata’) are vital to the effective exploitation of the reports, images, or signals documents for purposes of discovery and analysis.

Various attempts have been made to create controlled vocabularies for the consistent formulation of such metadata in order to enhance the degree to which the content formulated with their aid will be available to computational reasoning. These include:

Information Artifact Ontology (IAO)

Adverse Event Reporting Ontology (AERO)

Ontology of Data Mining (OntoDM)

Annotation Ontology

Dublin Core

EDAM

FRBR-aligned Bibliographic Ontology (FaBiO)

Information Artifact Ontology (IAO)

Ontologies using IAO

LOINC Document Ontology

Systems Biology Ontology (SBO)

Definition and Scope

The goal of this workshop is to advance coordination of these efforts along the following axes:

1. discussion of foundational issues concerning the ontological treatment of information artifacts and information entities and also concerning issues of dissemination (how can we advance the degree to which different communities use common, useful and usable ontologies)

2. addressing the relations, and if possible advancing convergence, between IAO, the family of IAO extension ontologies, and other resources developed to represent information artifacts in various domains.

3. sharing of information on existing resources and on plans for further development (including plans for coordination)

The workshop will consist of a mixture of short progress reports under heading 3, together with longer papers under headings 1 and 2. All papers will be refereed. In addition, there will be parallel tutorial sessions. At least one of these tutorial sessions will be devoted to addressing controversial issues and helping to consolidate plans for future work in the scope of IAO, which is a resource totally dedicated to information artifacts.

Interested participants can submit:

• A full-paper (5-6 pages) that addresses foundational issues (heading 1) or convergence between resources (heading 2).
• A short one-page progress report that discusses sharing of existing resources or further development (heading 3).
• A one-page proposal for a tutorial session.

We will have at least 6 peer-reviewed papers of a minimum of 5 pages each, for publication in the CEUR-WS series.

Workshop Schedule

Schedule:

• 9.30-11am Tutorial sessions (including at least one tutorial on IAO) parallel. These are tutorial sessions approaching ontology resources, especially IAO;
• 11.30-1pm Short progress reports. Presentation of the (1-page) progress reports designed to support sharing of information on existing resources and on plans for further development;
• 2-5pm Longer papers. Presentation of the long (5-6 page) papers discussing foundational issues concerning the ontological treatment of information artifacts and information entities, especially with a view to advancing convergence or alignment of existing resources with IAO.

Rules for submissions

Authors can submit short (1-page) and long papers (5 pages min, 6 pages max). All submissions will be refereed prior to publication. Accepted submissions will be published in the CEUR workshop proceedings.

Submissions may not have been published previously, nor be under review elsewhere. Papers should be submitted in PDF format to the Easychair submission page here. Submissions should be prepared in accordance with the LNCS formatting guidelines.

Proposals for 1.5 hour tutorial sessions are also welcome. These should be 1-page in length and must include a title, abstract, motivation as well as description of the content, aims, presentation style, and tutorial format. We expect the tutorials to have practical examples and exercises for participants.

Organizing Committee

Mauricio B. Almeida (Minas Gerais)

Mathias Brochhausen (Arkansas)

Laura Slaughter (Oslo)

Barry Smith (Chair, Buffalo)

Scientific Committee (draft)

Renata Maria Abrantes Baracho (Minas Gerais)

Marcello Peixoto Bax (Minas Gerais)

Werner Ceusters (Buffalo)

Janna Hastings (EBI)

Tatiana Malyuta (CUNY)

Ronald Rudnicki (CUBRC, Buffalo)

Renato Rocha Souza (Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio)

Frederico Fonseca (Penn State University)

Timeline

Deadline for submissions: May 22, 2014

Deadline for notification of acceptance: June 15, 2014

Deadline for camera-ready copy August 15, 2014

Workshop proceedings will be published with CEUR-WS