International Journal of Electronic Commerce

(the #1-ranked EC journal)

http://www.gvsu.edu/business/ijec/

Call for Papers

Special Issue on: “Semantic Matchmaking and Resource Retrieval”

http://sisinflab.poliba.it/ijec-si-smr/

SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED

Scope

Matchmaking is basically the process of discovering, based on a given request, promising partners or resources for some kind of purpose, as expressed in the match request. It is a process common to several scenarios in the Internet era, spanning from e-commerce to web services, to grid computing, to human resource management, to actual dating services, to peer-to--peer computing. Both requests and resource/partner descriptions are usually, but not always, given some kind of structure within matchmaking systems.

Principal issues emerge when the search has to be carried out in an automated way and is not limited to identity matches but, as in real life, when the objective is finding resources/partners suitable at least to some extent, or -- when a single partner cannot fulfil the request -- finding a pool of cooperating partners able to accomplish it. As this process may lead to various possible matches, the notion of ranking becomes central, to provide a list of potential partners ordered according to some criteria.

Due to the diversity of frameworks of application, matchmaking has been studied by several communities and it has been investigated under various perspectives and techniques, including text-based information retrieval, vague query answering, planning, constraint programming, fuzzy logic, frame logic, and description logics. Also, different definitions and terminologies have been given to common matchmaking issues.

Recently, the Semantic Web initiative has shifted the research towards logic-based approaches, where requests/demands and resources/supplies are described with reference to a shared ontology. Such approaches are far from being a "silver bullet", as several problems remain unsolved, such as the need for shared or at least integrated schemas, the need for reasoning services smarter than standard ones, time constraints and scalability issues.

This Special Issue seeks original papers that provide a significant novel contribution to the field. Papers are solicited that advance the current state-of-the-art in semantic matchmaking and resource retrieval, providing the latest breakthroughs achieved by scientists working in the area, and identifying promising research directions. Theoretical papers should present at least a proof of concept application .

Topics of interest for this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

· approximate semantic matchmaking

· hybrid resource retrieval

· approximate reasoning for resource retrieval

· non-monotonic reasoning for resource retrieval

· resource annotation for matchmaking

· (web/mobile) services discovery and composition

· efficient storage of semantic-based annotations for matchmaking and retrieval

· evaluation strategies of matchmaking procedures

· semantic matchmaking and retrieval applications for:

- P2P and B2C E-marketplaces

- Mobile Commerce

- Ubiquitous Computing

- Workflow composition

- Business processes

- Dating systems

- Semantic Grid

- Competencies management

- Multimedia

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts submitted to the special issue should contain original material not published in nor submitted to other journals. Submissions should be sent via e-mail to disciascio@poliba.it , in PDF format, and should not exceed 30 pages - A4 paper in 12 point type with a maximum of 38 lines per page and 75 characters per line (corresponding to LaTeX article style, 12 pt).

Editorial Board

Sudhir Agarwal - Karlsruhe University – Germany

Rama Akkiraju - IBM Research - USA

Pietro Bonatti - Università di Napoli "Federico II"- Italy

Alex Borgida - Rutgers University - USA

Andrea Calì - Free University of Bozen-Bolzano - Italy

Fabio Casati - University of Trento - Italy

Simona Colucci - Technical University of Bari - Italy

Giuseppe De Giacomo - University of Rome "La Sapienza" - Itlay

Tommaso Di Noia - Technical University of Bari - Italy

Eugenio Di Sciascio - Technical University of Bari - Italy

John Domingue - The Open University - UK

Francesco M. Donini - University of Tuscia - Italy

Stephan Grimm - Forschungszentrum Informatik – Germany

Bin He – IBM Research - USA

Tomasz Kaczmarek - Poznan University of Economics – Poland

Ruben Lara - Tecnologìa, Informaciòn y Finanzas - Spain

Alain Leger - France Telecom - France

David Martin - Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International - USA

Gregroris Mentzas - National Technical University of Athens - Greece

Andrea Omicini – University of Bologna – Italy

Massimo Paolucci - DoCoMo Labs - Germany

Bijan Parsia - University of Manchester – UK

Terry R. Payne - University of Southampton – UK

Axel Polleres - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos – Spain

Ulrike Sattler – University of Manchester – UK

Riccardo Rosati- University of Rome "La Sapienza" - Itlay

Marie-Christine Rousset - University of Grenoble - France

Giovanni Semeraro - University of Bari - Italy

Pavel Shvaiko - University of Trento - Italy

Evren Sirin - University of Maryland - USA

Umberto Straccia - ISTI-CNR - Italy

Important Dates:

October 20^th , 2006: Submission deadline [EXTENDED]

January 25^th, 2006: Notification of acceptance/rejection/revision [EXTENDED]

February 15^th, 2007: Revised manuscripts due:

April 5^th , 2007: Final manuscripts due

Guest Editors

Eugenio Di Sciascio - Politecnico di Bari,

Via E.Orabona, 4 I-70125 Bari, Italy

tel. +39 080 596 3641 fax +39 080 596 3410

e-mail. disciascio@poliba.it

Francesco M. Donini – Università della Tuscia

Via S. Carlo 32, I-01100 Viterbo, Italy

tel. +39 0761 357 861 fax: +39 0761 357 887

email: donini@unitus.it

Tommaso Di Noia - Politecnico di Bari,

Via E.Orabona, 4 I-70125 Bari, Italy

tel +39 080 596 3903 fax +39 080 596 3410

e-mail. t.dinoia@poliba.it