Call for papers

The workshop

    Combining Systems for Efficient and Scalable Reasoning 
    	      	      (CoSyScaRe 08) 


will be held as part of the 4th Int. Joint Conference on Automated
Reasoning (IJCAR'08) in Sydney, Australia.

Workshop website:     http://www.dfki.de/cosyscare/
Workshop dates:       10/11 August 2008
Submission deadline:  31 May 2008

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Large-scale reasoning can be a daunting task, so in the past this     
problem has been broken down into smaller parts to be attacked
independently. This has allowed us to build powerful theorem
provers, model generators, constraint and SAT solvers, computer
algebra systems etc. In recent years, there has been a surge of
interest in the question of how to combine reasoning systems so
that the whole is more than the sum of the parts (see e.g. Alan
Bundy's keynote talk "Cooperating Reasoning Processes: More than
just the Sum of their Parts", IJCAR 2007).

This workshop aims to bring together researchers interested in
all aspects of the combination of such systems.

On the one hand we are interested in system architectures and
implementations that maintain overall proof progress, support the
selection of suitable provers, keep the databases of individual
provers in a consistent state and allow for an incremental or
evolutionary development of complex proofs.

On the other hand, we are interested in the practical integration
of existing reasoning methods that lead to systems that are more
powerful than the sum of their parts or that are applicable to
problems outside the scope of traditional automated reasoning
approaches, like conjecture refutation, theorem discovery,
problem reformulation, etc.  

We therefore encourage the submission of papers describing the
successful application of integrated heterogeneous reasoning
systems to various intelligent tasks as well as the tools and
formalisms for heterogeneous evolutionary proof support.


*Topics*

Papers should address issues related to combining and integrating
reasoning systems, including but not limited to the following
areas:

 *Foundations*
    o Models and approaches to combine reasoning systems and their limitations 
    o Types of communication and interaction between reasoning systems 
    o Models and methodologies for collaborative reasoning
    o Heterogeneous logics and their proof support

 *Database and the Evolution of Proofs*
    o Common repository for reasoning systems
    o Exchange of (strategic) knowledge between reasoning systems
    o Document management and evolutionary proof development
    o Change management and reuse of (heterogeneous) proof work
     

 *Interaction between Systems*
    o Heuristics and criteria to distribute proof work to individual systems 
    o Translation of problems between systems for better proof support
    o Lemma speculation to adapt problems to the scope of efficient
      reasoning systems
    o Ontologies and classification of reasoning processes

 *Applications of Combined Reasoning Systems*
    o Standard problems such as theorem proving, model
      generation, machine learning, etc.
    o Pre-processing of AI problems
    o Flexible solving of ill-formed problems
    o Intelligent tasks which cannot be automated by stand-alone systems

 *Novel Approaches to Combining Reasoning Systems*
    o Multi-agent systems approaches
    o Approaches based on cognitive science models of human reasoning 
    o Approaches based on philosophical case studies
    o Parallel processing of reasoning problems
    o Combinations involving inductive, deductive and abductive reasoning methods

*Organisers*

 Simon Colton (Imperial College London)
 Dieter Hutter (DFKI Bremen)
 Christoph Lueth (DFKI Bremen)
 Alison Pease (University of Edinburgh)
 Volker Sorge (University of Birmingham)


*Submission*

Submissions are divided into three categories:
- Research papers (up to 15 pages) describing original and novel research
- Papers describing Work in progress  (up to 6 pages)
- Position papers (up to 3 pages) describing the background and actual 
  research of the author(s).

Submission is via EasyChair (thanks to Andrei Voronkov).
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cosyscare08


*Publication*

The final versions of the accepted papers will be published in
the workshop proceedings and distributed at the workshop. These
informal proceedings will also be made accessible on the web.

We plan either a Journal special issue or a book compilation
based on extended versions of selected contributions to the
workshop.

*Important dates*

   * Submission deadline        :  May 31, 2008
   * Notification of acceptance :  June 20, 2008
   * Final versions due         :  July 6, 2008
   * Workshop                   :  August 10-11, 2008


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For further information see http://www.dfki.de/cosyscare/
or contact us by e-mail to cosyscare@dfki.de