European Semantic Web Research: from Ontoweb to KnowledgeWeb

1. European Semantic Web Research:from Ontoweb to KnowledgeWeb Valentina TammaUniversity of Liverpool

2. OntoWeb • Project name: OntoWeb: Ontology-based information exchange for knowledge management and electronic commerce • Funding Agency: European Union, IST programme • Duration: 3 years: June 2001 to May 2004 • Budget: 1.8 M €uro • Contract number: IST-2000-29243 • Homepage: www.ontoweb.org • Mailing list: ontoweb-list@informatik.uibk.ac.atseweb-list@informatik.uibk.ac.at

3. Main goalswww.ontoweb.org • To promote research on ontology-based information exchange; • To provide a technical roadmap and state of the art reports on standards, theory, applications, and technology; • To provide services for scientists, practitioners and students; • To improve the co-operation with related research fields and standardisation initiatives in Europe and worldwide; • To assess the success of ontology-based applications, especially for Knowledge Management, Enterprise Integration, and Electronic Commerce;

4. Publications www.ontoweb.org • Technical roadmap; • Surveys on: • content standards, • ontology languages and standardisation efforts, • selection criteria for ontology-based applications, • ontology tools, • ontology management methodologies; • Requirements and assessment criteria for the use of ontologies in industrial applications;

5. Education www.ontoweb.org • Ontoweb-Edu web page provides access to more that 100 educational resources on ontologies and the semantic web. The resources are organised and semantically annotated; http://qmir.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/ontoweb/ • The First European Summer School on Ontological Engineering and the Semantic Web (SSSW-2003), Cercedilla (Spain), 21-26 July 2003.Courses and practical sessions on: Semantic Web, KR and ontology, NLP techniques for the SW, SW technologies for knowledge management, SW services.http://minsky.dia.fi.upm.es/summerschool/index.html

6. Dissemination www.ontoweb.org Journal of Web Semantics, published by Elsevier. Scientific articles, but also demos, ontologies, initiative descriptions and code. http://www.semanticwebjournal.org/ ISWC conference, International Semantic Web Conference, in collaboration with the Semantic Web science Association.http://iswc.semanticweb.org/2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2003)20-23 October 2003, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA

7. Contribution to standards www.ontoweb.org • Semantic web languages • Input to W3C Web Ontologies working group for the definition of OWL • Semantic Web services • Input to the DAML-S initiative aiming to semantic web services • Next joint meeting during ISWC 2 in Florida, October 2003

8. Semantic portal www.ontoweb.org • Ontoweb Portalhttp://www.ontoweb.org • Modular Content Type creation and modification • Personalisation and user preferences • Content Syndication through RDF • Bug Tracking System with Workflow and e-Mail Notification Upcoming Features • Annotation of web pages providing an annotation server • Web Agent Mechanism automatically updates content in the portal through RSS/RDF • Other Portals are able to login as Portal Client and add/integrate their content through RSS/RDF

9. Knowledge web http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/ The mission of Knowledge Web is to strengthen the European industry and service providers in one of the most important areas of current computer technology: Semantic web enabled e-work and e-commerce. Short-term support: Standardisation of languages and interfaces to reduce efforts and provide scalable solutions. Provision of methods, use cases, and guidelines for working with SW technology. Training courses to introduce SW technology to programmers and consultants. Medium-term support: Development of high-class education in the area of SW, Web Services, and ontologies. Establishment of the Virtual Institute for Semantic Web Education (VISWE). Long-term support: Coordination of the research capabilities of the leading research groups in Europe working in the areas of SW and web Services in order to realize Intelligent Web Services

10. Main objectives http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/ Outreach to Industry:Ontology language, tool, and method set, benchmarking, compliance testing, usage scenarios, cookbook style textbooks with best practices, and definition of tool environments based on slightly coupled Web Services. Support to the creation of an Ontology Registration Authority (ORA). Outreach to Education: The Virtual Institute for Semantic Web Education (VISWE) will act as the principal focus for educational activities on the SW. Delivery of course materials enhanced by making use of novel Semantic Web technologies in combination with more traditional e-learning environments. Coordination of Research: Joint research efforts on combining SW with web service technology. Creation of a Virtual Research Centre to further the coordination of research.

11. The transition period • Building on the Ontoweb effort, Knowledge Web will carry out the following activities: • to gather a number of industrial and service provider parties to identify needs and evaluate existing technologies and resources for the SW and SW services; • to gather a significant number of researchers (even outside the network boundaries and Europe boundaries) for tackling the main scientific challenges identified by the network; • to set up the (administrative and software) structure for housing our virtual centre for education; • to start evaluating available technology and expressing needs, pursue research and establish the research framework, and create educational resources or work with existing ones.

12. Who can join, how to join http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/ • Two types of membership: funded members, support members. Competitive calls for funded members, support members will be selected on applications; • Members from industry and academia are welcome; • Collaboration through joint activities with thematic networks on agents (AgentLink III) and open environments (Agentcities); • Contacts: • Coordinated actions on agent related topics: Valentina Tamma (University of Liverpool): V.A.M.Tamma@csc.liv.ac.uk • Membership: Rubén Lara (University of Innsbruck): ruben.lara@uibk.ac.at Ying Ding (University of Innsbruck): ying.ding@uibk.ac.at