(Apologies for cross postings)

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*                                                                     Call for Papers                                                                        *
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*                                                                      Semantic Web Journal                                                           *
*                                                          (URL: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/)                                  *
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*                                                                      Special Issue on                                                                     *
*                      Semantic Web and Reasoning for Cultural Heritage and Digital Libraries                            *
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URL:
http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/blog/special-issue-semantic-web-and-reasoning-cultural-heritage-and-digital-libraries

Short URL:
http://bit.ly/a6HmTk
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Description
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During the past few years, great and continually increasing scientific interest has been paid towards the efficient dissemination and management of the world's cultural assets on the Web. As more and more cultural heritage institutions tend to exploit World Wide Web's technologies in order to render their collections globally available, integrated access to this vast amount of content has become an imperative need. Traditionally, the main requisite for integrating diverse resources has been syntactic interoperability. However, in the more knowledge-intensive world of the Semantic Web a number of powerful techniques are offering the promise of knowledge-based management and retrieval instead of mere syntactic data exchange. In particular, techniques for obtaining semantic interoperability and reasoning over metadata and ontologies have been proven powerful tools towards this direction.

In the cultural heritage field, significant efforts have been initiated for achieving semantic-aware data integration, but many issues are still under discussion and problems remain unsolved. Hundreds of existing digital libraries and repository systems, responsible for gathering and disseminating digital objects originating from cultural assets, still lack common standards and best practices for properly ingesting and publishing knowledge. The community is looking for powerful semantic search and navigation mechanisms able to efficiently retrieve and interlink distributed, heterogeneous knowledge about cultural heritage. In addition, it is not clear what might be the most suitable evaluation techniques for analyzing the suggested methods and tools.


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Topics
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This special issue solicits contributions to the open problems of publishing cultural content on the Semantic Web, such as innovative techniques, tools,
case studies, comparisons, and theoretical advances. The papers should consider and present contributions towards representing semantic aspects of
cultural heritage information in the web environment, i.e. aspects of modeling, creating, aggregating, managing, publishing, and using content on
the Semantic Web in the cultural heritage field.


In particular, topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

    - Semantic-enabled search and recommending
    - Reasoning over cultural heritage information
    - Semantic content creation and annotation
    - Semantic integration of heterogeneous and contradicting information
    - Ontologies and vocabularies for cultural heritage
    - Linked heritage data and its applications
    - Semantic aging and ontology evolution
    - Evaluation of semantic techniques and systems
    - Web 2.0, collaborative systems, tagging, and user feedback
    - Semantic and mental maps of interlinked cultural content
    - Visualization techniques and paradigms
    - Success reports of in-use applications and projects


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Submissions
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High-quality papers containing original research results on the above and related topics are solicited. Extended versions of papers previously
published in conferences and workshops are also welcome, provided that they are substantially expanded and improved. Authors should submit a manuscript
through the Semantic Web Journal on-line system, following the guidelines available at: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/authors. Manuscripts
should have a length of 15-25 pages in IOS Press format. All submissions will undergo an open review process, according to the standards of the
Semantic Web Journal.


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Important Dates
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31/1/2011: Submission Deadline
31/3/2011: Author Notification
30/4/2011: Final Revisions
Summer 2011: Special Issue Publication


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Guest Editors
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Dimitrios A. Koutsomitropoulos
    High Performance Information Systems Laboratory
    Computer Engineering and Informatics Dpt.
    University of Patras
    Patras-Rio, Greece
    E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Eero Hyvönen
    Semantic Computing Research Group
    Department of Media Technology
    School of Science and Technology
    Aalto University
    Finland
    E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Theodore S. Papatheodorou
    High Performance Information Systems Laboratory
    Computer Engineering and Informatics Dpt.
    University of Patras
    Patras-Rio, Greece
    E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>


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Editorial Review Board
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    - Harith Alani, the Open University, UK
    - Andreas Andreou, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
    - Panayiotis Bozanis, University of Thessaly, Greece
    - Kate Byrne, University of Edinburgh, UK
    - Christodoulos Chamzas, University of Thrace, Greece
    - Andrea D'Andrea, CISA Orientale University, Italy
    - Christophe Dupriez, DESTIN SSEB, Belgium
    - Achille Felicetti, PIN Prato, Italy
    - Kate Fernie, MDR Partners, UK
    - Antoine Isaac, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
    - Sarantos Kapidakis, Ionian University, Greece
    - Tomi Kauppinen, University of Muenster, Germany
    - Stefanos Kollias, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
    - Werner Kuhn, University of Muenster, Germany
    - Ray Larson, University of California, Berkeley, USA
    - Thea Lindquist, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
    - Jacco van Ossenbrucken, CWI, the Netherlands
    - Bijan Parsia, Clark & Parsia LLC, USA
    - Tuukka Ruotsalo, University of California, Berkeley, USA
    - Christoph Schlieder, Bamberg University, Germany
    - Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcala, Spain
    - Rainer Simon, Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria
    - Giorgos Stoilos, University of Oxford, UK
    - Axel Vitzthum, Digicult SH, Germany