FOIS 2010

Background
The FOIS conference series began with the first meeting in Trento, Italy, in June 1998, which was followed by meetings in 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2008. The sixth FOIS conference will be held in Toronto, Canada, during 11-14 May 2010, and we are now calling for papers to be considered for inclusion in the conference.

Ontology began life in ancient times as a fundamental part of philosophical enquiry concerned with the analysis and categorisation of what exists. In recent years, the subject has taken a practical turn with the advent of complex computerised information systems which are reliant on robust and coherent representations of their subject matter. The systematisation and elaboration of such representations and their associated reasoning techniques constitute the modern discipline of formal ontology, which is now being applied to such diverse domains as artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, bioinformatics, GIS, knowledge engineering, information retrieval, and the Semantic Web. Researchers in all these areas are becoming increasingly aware of the need for serious engagement with ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations making up their respective domains of enquiry, to provide a solid foundation for their work.

FOIS is intended to provide a meeting point for researchers from these and other disciplines with an interest in formal ontology, where both theoretical issues and concrete applications can be explored in a spirit of genuine interdisciplinarity.

Topics Covered
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 as lying outside the scope of the meeting. Topic areas of particular interest to the conference are:

Foundational Issues
* Kinds of entity: particulars vs universals, continuants vs occurrents, abstracta vs concreta, dependent vs independent, natural vs artificial * Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence, constitution, subsumption, instantiation * Vagueness and granularity * Identity and change * Formal comparison among ontologies * Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, ...) * Ontology of biological reality (genes, proteins, cells, organisms, ...) * Ontology of artefacts, functions and roles * Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions and other mental attitudes; emotions, ...) * Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms,social relationships, artistic expressions, ...) * Ontology of the information society (information, communication, meaning negotiation, ...) * Ontology and Natural Language Semantics, Ontology and Cognition

Methodologies and Applications
* Top-level vs application ontologies * Ontology integration and alignment; role of reference ontologies * Ontology-driven information systems design * Ontology-based application systems * Requirements engineering * Knowledge engineering * Knowledge management and organization * Knowledge representation; Qualitative modeling * Computational lexicons; Terminology * Information retrieval; Question-answering * Semantic web; Web services; Grid computing * Domain-specific ontologies, especially for: Linguistics, Geography, Law, Library science, Biomedical science, E-business, Enterprise integration, ...

Deadlines and Further Information
Submissions: 31 October 2009 Notification of acceptance: 18 December 2009 Final camera-ready submission: 14 February 2010 Conference: 11-14 May 2010

Submitted papers should not exceed 14 pages (including bibliography). Details of the submission process, and formatting guidelines, will be provided on the conference web page (http://fois2010.mie.utoronto.ca/). Proceedings will be published by IOS Press and available at the conference.