Call for Papers
FOIS-2001

International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems

http://www.fois.org

October 17-19, 2001
Ogunquit, Maine

Sponsored by ACM

Conference Description

Research on ontology is becoming increasingly widespread in the computer science community. Its importance has been recognized in fields as diverse as e-commerce, enterprise and information integration, qualitative modelling of physical systems, natural language processing, knowledge engineering, database design, geographic information science, libraries, and intelligent information access. Insights in this field have potential impact on the whole area of information systems. In order to provide a solid general foundation for this work, it is important to focus on the common scientific principles and open problems arising from current tools, methodologies, and applications of ontology.

We envision FOIS to be a unique gathering whose essential character is strongly interdisciplinary, and truly unlike any other conference. The program committee includes representatives of three broad disciplines: computer and information science, philosophy, and linguistics, and includes researchers from sub-areas as diverse as formal ontology, knowledge engineering, logic, database design, natural language processing, library science, knowledge representation, descriptive metaphysics, and geographic information systems.

Although the primary focus of the conference is on theoretical issues, methodological proposals as well as papers dealing with concrete applications from a well-founded theoretical perspective are welcome. We also encourage those interested in top-level ontologies, web and e-commerce content standards, and enterprise modeling to participate.

Topics

We seek high-quality papers on a wide range of topics. While authors may focus on fairly narrow and specific issues, all papers should emphasize the relevance of the work described to formal ontology and to information systems. Papers that completely ignore one or the other of these aspects will be considered out of scope. Topic areas of particular interest to the conference are:

  1. Theoretical Issues
    • Foundations: mereology, constitution, identity, integrity, dependence, causality, vagueness, granularity
    • Kinds of entity: particulars vs. universals, continuants vs. occurrents, abstracta vs. concreta, attributes, relations, qualities, quantities, events, tropes or moments, states, situations, environments
    • Matter, space, time, motion, change
    • Natural kinds, organisms, artifacts
    • The ontology of social reality: legal and administrative entities, artistic expressions
    • The ontology of information, information processing, and software products
    • Cognitive foundations of ontologies, elicited ontologies, cross-cultural ontologies
    • Kinds of ontology: top-level ontologies, domain ontologies, task ontologies, application ontologies
  2. Application Areas
    • Knowledge organization, integration and standardization
    • Intelligent information access
    • B2C and B2B e-commerce
    • Information systems design
    • Knowledge engineering
    • Conceptual modelling
    • Qualitative modelling
    • Lexical semantics
    • Terminology integration
    • Product knowledge integration
    • Geographic information systems
    • Legal information systems
    • Business information systems
  3. Tools and Methodologies
    • Ontological and linguistic instruments for conceptual analysis
    • Methodologies for ontology development, maintenance, and integration

Deadlines

Electronic abstracts are due by 11 April, 2001
Final submissions are due by 17 April, 2001
Submitted papers should not exceed 10 pages. Electronic abstracts should be between 10-20 lines of text.

Further Information:

Electronic abstracts and papers submission is now available.

Any inquiries related to the conference should be directed to the program chairs: 

  Chris Welty 
  Vassar College Computer Science Department 
  Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0462, USA 
  Email: welty@cs.vassar.edu
  Voice: +1-914-437-5992
  Fax: +1-914-437-7498

  Barry Smith
  Seminar Philosophie, Universitaat Koblenz, Rheinau 
  56075 Koblenz, Germany 
  (on sabbatical from: Department of Philosophy, University of
  Buffalo, USA)
  Email phismith@buffalo.edu