Editors: Yolanda Gil, University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute and Paul Groth, Free University of Amsterdam
The Web is a decentralized system full of information provided by diverse open sources of varying quality. For any given question there will be a multitude of answers offered, raising the need for assessing their relative value and for making decisions about what sources to trust. In order to make effective use of the Web, we routinely evaluate the information we get, the sources that provided it, and the processes that produced it. A trust layer was always present in the Web architecture, and Berners-Lee envisioned an “oh-yeah?” button in the browser to check the sources of an assertion. The Semantic Web raises these questions in the context of automated applications (e.g. reasoners, aggregators, or agents), whether trying to answer questions using the Linked Data cloud, use a mashup appropriately or determine trust on a social network. Therefore, provenance is an important aspect of the Web that becomes crucial in Semantic Web research.
This special issue on Using Provenance in the Semantic Web of the Journal of Web Semantics aims to collect representative research in handling provenance while using and reasoning about information and resources on the web. Provenance has been addressed in a variety of areas in computer science targeting specific contexts, such as databases and scientific workflows. Provenance is important in a variety of contexts, including open science, open government, and intellectual property and copyright. Provenance requirements must be understood for specific kinds of Web resources, such as documents, services, ontologies, workflows, and datasets.
We seek high quality submissions that describe recent projects, articulate research challenges, or put forward synergistic perspectives on provenance. We solicit submissions that advance the Semantic Web through exploiting provenance, addressing research issues including:
Submissions may focus on uses of provenance in the Semantic Web for:
Papers may also focus on application areas, highlighting the challenges and benefits of using provenance:
We will aim at an efficient publication cycle in order to guarantee prompt availability of the published results. We will review papers on a rolling basis as they are submitted and explicitly encourage submissions well before the submission deadline. Submit papers online at the journal’s Elsevier Web site.
The Journal of Web Semantics solicits original scientific contributions of high quality. Following the overall mission of the journal, we emphasize the publication of papers that combine theories, methods and experiments from different subject areas in order to deliver innovative semantic methods and applications. The publication of large-scale experiments and their analysis is also encouraged to clearly illustrate scenarios and methods that introduce semantics into existing Web interfaces, contents and services. Submission of your manuscript is welcome provided that it, or any translation of it, has not been copyrighted or published and is not being submitted for publication elsewhere. Upon acceptance of an article, the author(s) will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the publisher. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. Manuscripts should be prepared for publication in accordance with instructions given in the “Guide for Authors” (available from the publisher), details can be found online. The submission and review process will be carried out using Elsevier’s Web-based EES system. Final decisions of accepted papers will be approved by an editor in chief.
The Journal of Web Semantics is published by Elsevier since 2003. It is an interdisciplinary journal based on research and applications of various subject areas that contribute to the development of a knowledge-intensive and intelligent service Web. These areas include: knowledge technologies, ontology, agents, databases and the semantic grid, obviously disciplines like information retrieval, language technology, human-computer interaction and knowledge discovery are of major relevance as well. All aspects of the Semantic Web development are covered. The current Editors-in-Chief are Tim Finin, Riichiro Mizoguchi and Steffen Staab. For all editors information, see our site.
The Journal of Web Semantics offers to its authors and readers:
The time is upon us for the second decennial U.S. Census of the 21st century, and I for one am excited. It is the first time in many of our lives that we will have a chance to participate in the single largest population enumeration event conducted by our nation. The Census is important in defining population boundaries and determining residency densities, as well as in allocating proper resources to localities. Further, social scientists, statisticians, geographers, and other academics analyze census data regularly in their research endeavors. I know it’s nerdy, but the ability to analyze data conducted on such a large scale makes my heart race.
To ensure valid data is gathered, any illegal activities or residency recorded by Census enumerators can not in turn be reported to legal authorities, under penalty of law. Also, while the tendency may be to goof off while completing questionnaires and surveys (my sophomore roommate agreement indicated that disputes would be resolved through gladiator battles), it is important to be honest and accurate while filling out the census forms. For example, a critical issue is to ensure you are not double counted; if you will be completing the Census form, give your parents/guardians a call and tell them not to count you as a resident.
Enjoy your spring break, don’t drink and drive, and please help ensure that the 2010 Census is as accurate as possible!
]]>