Call for Applications Track Papers

(Emerging, In-Use, Industry)

Semantic technologies are reaching maturity on the Web, especially through the increase in their use to publish, structure and make sense of web data, whether they are in the form of linked data, through schema.org, or with semantics included in other data formats than RDF (CSV, JSON, etc). The Applications (Emerging, In-Use, Industry) Track at ISWC 2016 provides a forum for the community to explore the benefits and challenges of applying semantic technologies in concrete, practical applications, in contexts ranging from industry to government and science. We are especially interested this year in applications that use the emerging knowledge graphs or semantic technologies on the web together with data mining, reasoning, machine learning, or natural language processing techniques to the benefit of concrete, real-world scenarios. We are also looking for descriptions of applied and validated industry solutions as software tools, systems or architecture that benefit from the adoption of semantic technologies. In this respect this track will accept three different types of submissions:

We strongly encourage authors to clearly expose (1) limitations of existing (if any) “non-semantics” approaches that address similar challenges, (2) benefits of semantic technologies (e.g., measurable impacts such as accuracy, scalability, usability or functionality) in real-world settings, and (3) lessons learned from experimentation and / or large scale deployment.

We therefore expect submissions to the Applications (Emerging, In-Use, Industry) Track to contain at least the following elements:

• A clear description and motivation of the problem being addressed, and of its importance in the corresponding domain
• A description of the system, application or tool developed that clearly shows the role that semantic technologies and principles are playing in its architecture, or the contribution helping the adoption of semantic technologies and principles
• A clear statement about the current user / client base of the system, application or tool (including size and composition, e.g. domain experts, developers, etc.), as well as plans for deployment/adoption
• For In-Use papers: A discussion on the benefits and challenges associated with the use of semantic technologies and principles in the considered scenarios, both from a technical (what the technology enables) and a non-technical (e.g. development effort required, effect on user interaction/satisfaction, policy-related issues) point of view
• For Industry papers: A clear description of the impact in the respective industry and motivation for the need of semantic web technologies.
• For Emerging applications: A clear description on requirements or next steps for large scale deployment in real world settings. The Semantic Web community should benefit from lessons learned / advices for emerging applications to be deployed in large scale environments.

Authors will have the opportunity to submit a rebuttal to the reviews to clarify questions posed by program committee members.

As in previous years, student-authors of accepted papers will be able to apply for travel support to attend the conference.

Application descriptions may also be submitted to the Poster and Demo Track whenever appropriate. This could be an alternative for authors from Industry unable to provide details on their application while getting relevant feedback from the semantic Web community.

Delineation from the Research and Resource Tracks

Submissions may employ various methods (e.g. from software engineering, scientific methods - qualitative and/or quantitative, analytics) to understand in greater detail the deployment of semantic technologies and data (online or offline) or present novel practical approaches that are relevant to the deployment of semantics, but may not otherwise gain an outlet in the conference. Submissions to the Applications (Emerging, In-Use, Industry) Track should rely on a concrete implementation. We expect implementation details on the application or the tool / system / architecture being presented. In addition we expect evaluations according to measures/indicators that are relevant to the adoption of the application or the performance of the tool. However, papers presenting a research prototype where the main objective is to support the validation of a research hypothesis or answering a research question are more appropriate for the Research Track.

Papers presenting resources such as datasets, ontologies, workflows, software tools (descriptions of established software resources) or evaluation benchmarks, as important outputs of any scientific work, are more appropriate to the Resource Track.

Topics of Interest

We invite the submission of original papers organized around some of the following aspects:

• Description and analysis of concrete problems and user requirements for applying semantic technologies in a specific domain
• Descriptions of how Semantic Web resources (ontologies, datasets, software, etc) are being used in practice
• Analysis and evaluation of usability and uptake of Semantic Web tools and technologies
• Scalability analysis and large scale deployment
• Assessment of the pros and cons of using semantic technologies to solve a particular and practical problem
• Pragmatics of using or deploying semantic technologies in real-world scenarios
• Comparison of semantic technologies with alternative approaches that use conventional or competing technologies
• Learned lessons and best practices from deploying and using an application or service based on Semantic Web technologies
• Assessment of costs and benefits of implementing, deploying, using, and managing Semantic Web technologies
• Analysis of risks and opportunities of using Semantic Web technologies in organizations with respect to their businesses and customers
• Descriptions of alternative semantic technologies being deployed in practice
• Description of Semantic Web ontologies and/or datasets that are being widely used in practice
• Mobile apps based on semantic technologies that have substantial user base

The Semantic Web Applications (Emerging, In-Use, Industry) papers will be evaluated on their relevance to the track, rigor in the methodology and analysis used to reach conclusions, originality, readability, and usefulness to developers, researchers, and practitioners.

Submission Details

• Pre-submission of abstracts is a strict requirement. All papers and abstracts have to be submitted electronically via the EasyChair conference submission system.
• ISWC-2016 submissions are not anonymous.
• All submissions must be in English, and no longer than 16 pages. Papers that exceed this limit will be rejected without review.
• Submissions must be either in PDF or in HTML, formatted in the style of the Springer Publications format for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). For details on the LNCS style, see Springer's Author Instructions. For details on the HTML format, see the HTML submission guide.
• We encourage embedding metadata in the PDF to provide a machine readable link from the paper to the resource.
• Authors of accepted papers will be required to provide semantic annotations for the abstract of their submission, which will be made available on the conference web site. Details will be provided at the time of acceptance.
• Accepted papers will be distributed to conference attendees and also published by Springer in the printed conference proceedings, as part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
• At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference and present the paper there.
• Publicly accessible content related to datasets / services / software / application is strongly encouraged (although not a requirement)

Review Criteria

For “In Use papers”

• Value of the use case in demonstrating benefits/challenges of semantic technologies
• Adoption by domain practitioners and general members of the public
• Applicability of the lessons learned to other use cases
• Clarity and quality of the description

For “Industry papers”

• Significance of the problem addressed by the tool / system / architecture
• Impact of the tool / system / architecture, especially in supporting the adoption of semantic technologies
• Quality, performance, and added business value of the tool / system / architecture
• Clarity and quality of the description

For “Emerging Applications papers”

• Significance of the problem addressed by the tool / system / architecture
• Potential impact of the application, especially in supporting the adoption of semantic technologies
• Requirements and / or next steps for large scale deployment in real world settings.
• Quality and performance of the tool / system / architecture in its current state
• Clarity and quality of the description

Prior Publication and Multiple Submissions

ISWC 2016 will not accept research papers that, at the time of submission, are under review for or have already been published in or accepted for publication in a journal, another conference, or another ISWC track. The conference organizers may share information on submissions with other venues to ensure that this rule is not violated.

Program Chairs

• Markus Krötzsch

  TU Dresden Germany
  ( markus.kroetzsch.1256@tu-dresden.de )

• Freddy Lecue

  Accenture Tech Labs, Ireland
  INRIA, France
  ( freddy.lecue.6478@inria.fr )

Program Committee

The list of program committee members will be announced here.

---

Sponsors

Platinum Sponsors

Gold Sponsors

NTT Resonant

Silver Sponsors

Student Travel Award Sponsor

---

Organizers