[Corpora-List] ESWC2006 Workshop on "MASTERING THE GAP: From Information Extraction to Semantic Representation"

[George Demetriou]

[Apologies for multiple postings]

Mastering the Gap: From Information Extraction to Semantic Representation
*
Workshop to be held in conjunction with ESWC 2006 
<http://www.eswc2006.org> Budva, Montenegro, June 11-14, 2006

                    http://tev.itc.it/mtg.html

*The Workshop focuses on the interface between the information extracted 
from content objects and the semantic layer in which this information is 
explicitly represented in the form of ontologies and their instances. 
The Workshop will provide an opportunity for discussing adequate 
methods, processes (pipelines) and representation formats for the 
annotation process.

Automating the process of semantic annotation of content objects is a 
crucial step for bootstrapping the Semantic Web. This process requires a 
complex flow of activities which combines competences from different 
areas. The Workshop will focus precisely on the interface between the 
information extracted from content objects (e.g., using methods from 
NLP, image processing, text mining, etc.) and the semantic layer in 
which this information is explicitly represented in the form of 
ontologies and their instances. The workshop will provide an opportunity 
for: discussing adequate methods, processes (pipelines) and 
representation formats for the annotation process; reaching a shared 
understanding with respect to the terminology in the area; discussing 
the lessons learned from projects in the area, and putting together a 
list of the most critical issues to be tackled by the research community 
to make further progress in the area.
Some of the possible challenges to be discussed at the workshop are:

    * How can ontological/domain knowledge be fed back into the 
extraction process?
    * How can the semantic layer be extended by the results of 
information extraction (e.g. ontology learning)?
    * What are the steps of an annotation process, which steps can be 
standardized for higher flexibility? Which parts are intrinsically 
application-specific?
    * What are the requirements towards formats for representing 
semantic annotations?
    * Where is the borderline of automation and how can it be further 
pushed?
    * How can the linking with the semantic layer be supported on the 
concept/schema level as well as on the instance level?
    * How can knowledge extracted from different sources with different 
tools and perhaps different reference ontologies (interoperability) be 
merged (semi-)automatically?
    * How can extraction technologies for different media (e.g. text and 
images) be combined and how can the merged extraction results be 
represented in order to create synergies?

The Workshop will be a mixture of short paper presentation and open 
discussions on a number of topics related to mastering the gap between 
information extraction and semantic representation including (but not 
restricted to):

    * Annotation representation formats
    * Approaches to semantic integration
    * Approaches to semantic elicitation
    * From lexical entities to entities in the domains
    * From extracted features to entities in the domain

All members of the Semantic Web community are invited to submit papers 
(of max 15 pages length) reporting on original work in these and related 
areas. Submissions should be formatted according to the Springer LNCS 
style and will be selected for inclusion based on reviews by domain 
experts. At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the 
workshop and all workshop participants must pay the ESWC 2006 workshop 
registration fee, as well as the conference fee.
*
*Important dates:
----------------

Submission Deadline:             April 14, 2006
Notification of Acceptance:    April 28, 2006
Date of Workshop:                June 12, 2006