Mechanisms for reasoning with context have become increasingly important factors in the Semantic
Web. There is a growing need for general and robust reasoning techniques that make it possible to 
integrate heterogeneous knowledge or to use homogeneous knowledge across different domains.

Research on this topic has so far, and not surprisingly, concentrated on formal ontologies, 
i.e., on the logical structures that encode the semantics of a software's domain of application. 
Work on the Semantic Web as well as on information integration, distributed knowledge management, 
multi-agent and distributed reasoning has focussed on the relationship between an ontology and its
context. This has aimed at clarifying how to relate knowledge that is distributed over many resources.
Recent Semantic Web specific developments suggest that aspects of this relation can be captured by
means of named graphs (to express meta-information), the use of provenance (to track the context 
where data/axioms came from) and querying (to facilitate reasoning).

Other neighbouring research areas,  though,  have also investigated topics that shed light on 
how to reason with context in the Semantic Web. Ontology Engineering and Maintenance, for instance, 
has tackled the problems faced by ontology engineers when developing and maintaining an ontology. 
The yielded automation of the process of ontology development and of its phases (e.g. knowledge 
elicitation, revision cycles, alignment with pre-existing ontologies etc.) has improved efficiency,
reduced the introduction of unintended meanings into ontologies and in general made explicit the 
relationship between an ontology and its development context. Finally, research on Problem Solving
and Agent Communication has explored how an agent's ontology needs to change at run-time because 
of interactions with its context ? for instance with other agents whose ontologies are not known or
with new non-classifiable world situations. This type of research has delivered a deeper understanding
of the evolution of an ontology and is often based on non-monotonic reasoning, belief revision or
changes of signature, i.e., of the grammar of the ontology's language, with a minimal disruption 
to the original theory.

* Topics of interest:

   This special issue aims at bringing together work on reasoning with context in the Semantic Web 
from the integration, development and evolutionary perspectives described above. Submitted articles,
which may describe either theoretical results or applications, must clearly pertain to the Semantic
Web and/or to semantic technologies. They should  present either Semantic Web specific approaches
to reasoning with context, or approaches that have characteristics that are interesting for the 
Semantic Web (e.g., scalability, bounded reasoning), or approaches that are of value to a larger 
community containing a non-trivial Semantic Web sub-community (e.g. revision/update techniques and
error pin-pointing).

Submissions are welcome on topics relevant to reasoning with context in the Semantic Web and 
that include but are not limited to:

- Named graphs
- Provenance
- Knowledge representation languages for semantic technologies
- Planning and reasoning about action and change in the Semantic Web
- Ontology fault diagnosis and repair
- Pinpointing of logical errors in contexts and ontologies
- Explanation and justifications in DL ontologies
- Ontology and context evolution, debugging, update and merging
- Inconsistency handling in contexts and ontologies
- Uncertainty handling, defeasible reasoning and argumentation in ontologies
- Non-classical belief revision
- Context revision and theory change in DL ontologies
- Ontology and context versioning
- Semantic difference in ontologies and in contexts
- Information and knowledge integration
- The role of context and ontology in distributed reasoning and knowledge management
- Heuristic and approximate reasoning
- Bounded reasoning and bounded rationality in the Semantic Web
- Adaptive systems and reconfiguration
- Ontology-based data access
- Querying
- Multi-Agent systems in the Semantic Web
- Temporal and spatial reasoning
- Normative reasoning in the Semantic Web
- General problem solving for semantic technologies
- Machine learning for the Semantic Web
- Philosophical foundations of reasoning about context and ontology evolution
- Comparison of uses of contexts and ontologies

* How to submit

Maximal length of submissions is 25 pages. Authors should upload submissions on Elsevier's 
Electronic Submission System at

http://ees.elsevier.com/jws

Choose "Reasoning with context in SW" as article type. See the link "Guide Authors" on the above url for instructions.

* Important dates:

- Submission deadline: 15 June 2011
- First-round reviews: 5 September 2011
- Revised papers submitted: 30 September 2011
- Final acceptance decisions: 31 October 2011
- Tentative publication date: April 2012

* Guest editors:

Alan Bundy (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom) Jos Lehmann (University of Edinburgh, 
United Kingdom) Ivan Varzinczak (CSIR Meraka Institute, South Africa)

Send enquiries and communications to: organization@arcoe.org