Call for Contributions: Journal of Web Semantics (Web 2.0 and the semantic web)

German title: Aufruf für Artikel-Beiträge: Journal of Web Semantics (Web 2.0 und das semantische Web) (Translate text to: Deutsch)]

Call for Contributions: Journal of Web Semantics
SPECIAL ISSUE ON WEB 2.0 AND THE SEMANTIC WEB

Submission Deadline: 1 June 2007

Guest Editors:
Mark Greaves, Vulcan Inc.
Peter Mika, Yahoo! Research Barcelona

The cluster of technologies and design patterns known as Web 2.0 has now emerged as the leading contender for “the next evolution of the Web.” Researchers, developers, and venture capitalists are all flocking toward the banner of Web 2.0, based on its promise of massively increased sharing and participation among web users. At the same time, the technologies of the Semantic Web have been quietly maturing and spreading, and now provide a clear way to apply a basic level of formal semantics to a web infrastructure. In their own way, both of these technologies address the fundamental semantic concepts of shared meaning.
The Journal of Web Semantics solicits high quality papers on the impact of the Web 2.0 revolution and the technology, deployment, and vision of the Semantic Web. We are interested comparative papers that address both directions of the impact:

1. Semantic Web technologies were initially designed before the rise of the Web 2.0 methods for large-scale socially-contributed content. What lessons should Semantic Web technologies draw from the popularity of tag systems, social networks, mashups, and other Web 2.0 techniques? Does the success of the social, user-oriented contribution models of Web 2.0 impact the way that Semantic Web data should be created, deployed, exploited, managed, and shared? In short, should particular aspects of the Semantic Web be reconsidered in the light of Web 2.0? For example:

• How can we exploit the wisdom of crowds to extend and maintain ontologies and instance information? Could social software provide the missing mechanisms for sharing ontologies and metadata? Are there implications for existing family of web ontology languages?
• Is the existing work on Semantic Web Services adequate to support the Web 2.0 world’s practice of creating mashups?
• Are there particular extensions to the Semantic Web base architecture, such as privacy, trust, and provenance, that could provide elegant and economical solutions to Web 2.0 issues?

2. Web 2.0 applications always depend on some type of shared semantics — for example, between the software components of a mashup, or within the user community that contributes to a particular tagging system. Can the relative precision and rigor of Semantic Web representations and inference add significant value to Web 2.0 applications?

• Are the various Semantic Web “bridge” technologies (like RDFa, GRDDL, and SPARQL) adequate to the semantic demands of Web 2.0 applications?
• Can Semantic Web techniques be used to substantially enhance perceived user value in Web 2.0 social networks, for example by linking across communities?
• How could we leverage commercial Web 2.0 applications and design patterns to increase the traction and uptake of the Semantic Web?

Topics of interest range from theoretical issues, methods, tools, system descriptions and applications. We are also interested in high-quality, carefully-argued discussion papers on the possibilities for convergence between these two technologies.

Important Dates:
Deadline for submission: 1 June 2007
Notification of acceptance: 20 July 2007
Final Papers due: 10 August 2007
Special issue’s publication: December 2007

Submissions:
We are interested in shorter (~10 pages), highly-targeted papers, which may include concurrent publication (via the Journal of Web Semantics’ Preprint Server) of companion ontologies, folksonomies, open-source code, and the like. On-line paper submission is required, via Elsevier’s Author’s Portal for the Journal of Web Semantics. Elsevier has requested that we remind authors to select “Special Issue: Socio-Semantic Web” when they reach the “Article Type” step in the on-line submission process.

Key URLs and Contact Info:
Elsevier “Journal of Web Semantics” home page and Author Portal:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws…

Journal of Web Semantics Preprint Server:
http://www.websemanticsjournal.org/

For any questions, please contact the guest editors:

Mark Greaves
Vulcan Inc.
505 Fifth Ave S., Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104 USA
markg@vulcan.com
+1 (206) 342 2276

Peter Mika
Yahoo! Research Barcelona
Ocata 1, 1st floor
08003 Barcelona
Catalunya, Spain
pmika@yahoo-inc.com
+34 935 421 165