*** Apologies for cross-posting ***
Call for papers: FOIS 2023
13th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2023), July
17-20, 2023 (Sherbrooke, QC, Canada) and Sept 18-20, 2023 (Online)
http://fois2023.griis.ca
For any questions, please email: fois2023(a)gmail.com
Definition and scope
The FOIS conference is a meeting point for all researchers with an interest in formal
ontology. Formal ontology is the systematic study of the types of entities and relations
making up the domains of interest represented in modern information systems. The
conference encourages submission of high quality, not previously published results on both
theoretical issues and practical advancements. FOIS 2023 will have distinct tracks for
foundational issues, ontology applications and methods, and domain ontologies.
FOIS aims to be a nexus of interdisciplinary research and communication for researchers
from many domains engaging with formal ontology. Common application areas include
conceptual modeling, database design, knowledge engineering and management, software
engineering, organizational modeling, artificial intelligence, robotics, computational
linguistics, the life sciences, bioinformatics and scientific research in general,
geographic information science, information retrieval, library and information science, as
well as the Semantic Web.
FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its
Applications (IAOA:
http://iaoa.org/), which is a non-profit organization promoting
interdisciplinary research and international collaboration in formal ontology.
Important dates
• Paper submission deadline: 31 January 2023
• Author rebuttal period: March 24-31, 2023 (tentative)
• Notifications: April 10, 2023 (tentative)
• Camera-ready papers: May 1, 2023
• Onsite conference: July 17-20, 2023
• Virtual conference: week of September 18, 2023
The submission deadline for workshops will be after the notifications to allow authors to
submit a revised version of rejected papers to any of the conference workshops if the
paper topics are appropriate for this workshop.
Location
FOIS 2023 will consist of a physical meeting and a virtual meeting:
• An in-person only meeting in Sherbrooke, Quebec from July 17 to 21, 2023 that will be
very much like a traditional conference with keynotes, regular talks, workshops and
tutorials and plenty of social and networking opportunities. This part will not have a
remote participation option, but we plan on recording selected talks (e.g. keynotes).
• This will be followed by an online part to be held from September 18 to 20, 2023 that
offers an opportunity for presentation and discussion of additional papers that were not
presented at the physical meeting in Sherbrooke.
Submissions
FOIS 2023 seeks three types of full-length (14 pages) high-quality papers on a wide range
of topics:
• Foundational papers address content-related ontological issues, their formal
representation, and their relevance to some aspect of information systems.
• Application and Methods papers address novel systems, methods, and tools related to
building, evaluating, or using ontologies, emphasizing the impact of ontology contents.
• Domain ontology papers describe a novel ontology for a specific realm of interest,
clarifying ontological choices against requirements and foundational theory, and showing
ontology use.
Please refer to the Submissions Instructions (coming soon) for more details. As usual,
the FOIS proceedings will be published by IOS Press.
Topics of interest
Areas of particular interest to FOIS include the following:
Foundational Issues
• Kinds of entities: particulars/universals, continuants/occurrents, abstracta/concreta,
dependent entities/independent entities, natural objects/artifacts, events/processes
• Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence, constitution, causality,
subsumption, instantiation
• Vagueness and granularity
• Space, time, and change
Methodological issues
• Top-level vs. domain-specific ontologies
• Role of reference ontologies
• Ontology similarity, integration, alignment, matching and entity reconciliation
• Ontology modularity, patterns, and contextuality
• Ontology evaluation, quality, reuse, adaptation, and evolution
• Ontology compliance with FAIR principles
• Formal comparison among ontologies
• Relationship between conceptual modeling and ontologies
• Relationship with cognition, language, semantics, and context
• Connections between knowledge graphs and ontologies
• Methodological issues in the applications of ontologies
• Social issues, such as trust or bias, with respect to ontologies
Applications
• Technical applications of ontologies, such as
• Semantic Web
• Other areas of AI (Machine Learning, Explainable AI, Rules)
• Qualitative modeling
• Systems applications of ontologies, such as
• Ontology-driven information systems design
• Ontology-based data access
• Knowledge management
• Information retrieval
• Computational linguistics
• Metadata management
• Domain applications of ontologies, such as
• Ontologies for business modeling
• Ontologies for particular scientific disciplines (biology, chemistry, geography,
physics, geoscience, cognitive sciences, linguistics, etc.)
• Ontologies for engineering: shape, form and function, artifacts, manufacturing, design,
architecture, etc.
• Ontologies for the humanities: arts, cultural studies, history, literature, philosophy,
etc.
• Ontologies for the social sciences: economics, law, political science, anthropology,
archeology, etc.
• Ontologies for Open Science and dataset sharing
Domain-specific ontologies
• Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, etc.)
• Ontology of biological reality (organisms, genes, proteins, cells, etc.)
• Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions, emotions, perceptions,
cognition, etc.)
• Ontology of artifacts, functions, capacities and roles
• Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms, social relationships,
artistic expressions, etc.)
Conference Organization
General Chair:
Antony Galton, University of Exeter, UK
PC Chairs:
Nathalie Aussenac-Gilles, IRIT-CNRS Toulouse, France
Torsten Hahmann, University of Maine, USA
Local Organization Chair:
Jean-François Ethier, University of Sherbrooke, Canada
Online Chair:
Cassia Trojahn, IRIT Université Toulouse 2, France
Workshop and Tutorial Chairs:
Megan Katsumi, University of Toronto, Canada
Emilio Sanfilippo, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy
Early Career Chairs:
Antoine Zimmermann, École des Mines de Saint-Étienne (EMSE), France
Guendalina Righetti, Free University Bozen/Bolzano, Italy
Demo & Showcase Chairs:
Sergio de Cesare, University of Westminster, UK
TBA
Publicity Chairs:
Lucia Gomez Alvarez, TU Dresden, Germany
Selja Seppälä, University College Cork, Ireland
Proceedings Chair:
Maria Hedblom, Jönköping University, Sweeden
_________________________
Dr. Lucía Gómez Álvarez
Computational Logic Group
Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Faculty of Computer Science
TU Dresden
GERMANY