CFP: WWW'06 Workshop on Identity, Reference, and the Web (IRW'06)

[Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>]

IRW2006 - Identity, Reference, and the Web

http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/irw2006/

Co-located Workshop at WWW2006,
Edinburgh Scotland, May

First Call for Papers
=============

Goal and Theme:
******************

Our goal for this workshop is to explore the nature of identification
and reference on the Web, building on current work in Web Architecture,
the Semantic Web and informal community-based tagging (folksonomy), as
well as current practice in XML and theory in philosophy and
linguistics. This workshop should bring together researchers and
practitioners from a variety of backgrounds in order to discuss and
clarify these issues.

URIs are the primary mechanism for reference and identity on the Web. To
be useful, a URI must provide access to information which is sufficient
to enable someone or something to uniquely identify a particular thing
and the thing identified might vary between contexts. There is no doubt
that as a mechanism for identifying web pages the URI has been wildly
successful. Currently, URIs can also be used to identify namespaces,
ontologies, and almost anything. However, important questions about the
interpretation, use, and meaning of URIs have been left unanswered,
questions that have important ramifications for everything from search
engines to philosophy. As soon as matters get complicated, there is
little or no consensus on issues of identification and reference on the
Web. Put simply, given a URI, how should the nature of its intended
referent be known in an interoperable and preferably automatic manner?

This is not an easy question to answer: for example, the Semantic Web
and folksonomies present two distinctly differing viewpoints. On the
Semantic Web a URI nominally identifies a single resource, while
folksonomies rely on a more informal group consensus. Notions of
identity will have even larger ramifications when privacy and trust
become central issues for the Web. The management of this issue impacts
practical issues of data integration on the Web and versioning and
evolution for languages that use URIs, such as XML.

This workshop at WWW 2006 will offer an open forum to constructively
discuss and make progress on these issues.

Topics Of Interest, but not limited to:

    * The nature of URIs and resources on the Web
    * Identification, perspectives and contexts
    * Model-theories for identity and reference on the Web
    * Philosophical analysis of issues of identity and reference
      on the Web
    * Linguistic theories of reference and identity on the Web
    * Tagging and Web 2.0 for identification
    * Concrete Standards for identification
          - 'tdb' URN and 'taguri' URI Schemes
          - Subject Indicators for Topic Maps
          - WPN RDDLs
          - URIQA
          - HTTP Status Codes
          - MIME Types
          - URNs and URLs
    * Impact of URIs and identification on Web Services and
      the Semantic Web
    * URI ownership and identification
    * How the Web Revolution effects traditional concepts
      of identify and reference
    * URI usage for language versioning and identification
    * Identity and Trust on the Web


Important Dates:
******************

Submission Due Date: February 17th 2006

Notification of Acceptance: March 31st 2006

Workshop Date: To be announced

Submissions must conform to the ACM formatting guidelines for WWW2006
and must not exceed 10 pages, including all text, references,
appendices, and figures. Submissions must be in English and sent in
Portable Document Format (PDF). Papers are to be submitted to the
workshop via e-mail by e-mailing hhalpin no(at)spam ibiblio.org.


Paper Presentation:
**********************

Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop by one of the authors.
At least one author of each paper therefore should register for the main
conference before the early registration deadline. After each
presentation there will be time for discussion and questions. The
workshop will end with an open discussion of the challenges presented by
the issues of identity and reference for the Web.

Publication:
*************

Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings, which
will be distributed during the workshop and made available online. We
plan to invite accepted authors to submit revised and extended versions
of their papers for an upcoming publication on this topic.

Workshop Co-Chairs:
**********************

    * Pat Hayes, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
    * Harry Halpin, University of Edinburgh
    * Henry S. Thompson, World Wide Web Consortium and
                         University of Edinburgh

Programme Committee:
*************************

    * Joshua Allen, Microsoft
    * Bill Andersen, Ontology Works
    * David Booth, Hewlett-Packard
    * Kurt Cagle, Cagle Communications
    * Andy Clark, University of Edinburgh
    * Kendall Clark, University of Maryland
    * Dan Connolly, World Wide Web Consortium
    * Luciano Floridi, University of Oxford
    * Stefano Franchi, University of Auckland
    * David Israel, SRI International
    * Ewan Klein, University of Edinburgh
    * Graham Klyne, Nine by Nine and
                    University of Oxford
    * Larry Masinter, Adobe
    * Chris Menzel, Texas A&M University
    * Alistair Miles, CCLRC
    * Peter Patel-Schneider, Bell Labs
    * Matthias Scheutz, University of Notre Dame
    * John Sowa, Vivomind Intelligence
    * Patrick Stickler, Nokia
    * Bernard Vatant, Mondeca
    * Stuart Weibel, OCLC