Call for Workshop Proposals

The role of the ISWC workshops is to provide a setting for focused, intensive scientific exchange among researchers and practitioners interested in specific topics related to the general theme of the conference. As such, workshops are the primary venues for the exploration of emerging ideas, for the discussion of novel aspects of established research topics, and for the exchange with related research communities. We invite you to submit a proposal for workshops on a research topic of interest to ISWC attendees. Please note that for ISWC 2024, we will issue a separate Call for Tutorials later in the year.

Important Dates

– All deadlines are 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

Workshop Topics

We look for three types of workshop proposals:

• Novel workshops on emerging topics that will become more important to the Semantic Web and Knowledge Graph Community in future years. Proposers will have to argue why the topic is of increasing importance for the community and why it will attract enough submissions and participants to support the development of the topic. Proposals of this type will mainly be evaluated on the timeliness of the workshop topic, and the potential for future impact.
• Crossover workshops on possible interplay and convergence between ISWC and other research communities (e.g. “X meets the Semantic Web”). Proposers – including representatives of both communities – will have to argue why it is relevant to bring together the two fields, what common challenges exist, and why the “fusion” between them would bring value to the two research areas. Proposals of this type will mainly be evaluated on the ability to build bridges across scientific communities and the potential value brought by the envisioned cross-area collaboration.
• Established workshops on a specific aspect of Semantic Web research that have demonstrated the ability to attract a high number of submissions and participants as well as a noticeable effect on the scientific progress in that particular field, but have not yet become a mainstream topic in the main ISWC tracks. Such proposals should justify why the workshop series merits continuation and how it continues to maintain a focused scope. Corresponding proposals will be evaluated on the validity of their arguments for continuation and past success.

  Workshop proposals of all types are encouraged to promote the vitality and innovation of the Semantic Web and Knowledge Graph community.

Review criteria

Workshop proposals should address research topics that satisfy each of the following criteria:

• the topic falls in the general scope of ISWC 2023, with Semantic Web standards and technologies, knowledge representation and graph data models playing a central role
• there is a clear focus on a specific technology, problem, or application
• there is potential to attract a sufficiently broad community interested in the topic, including researchers not necessarily belonging to the usual ISWC attendees
• the workshop format is varied, interesting, suitable for the workshop audience, and includes in the program some interactive sessions different from pure paper presentation (like roundtables, debates, Q&A, roadmapping, hackathons)

The decision on acceptance or rejection of a workshop proposal will be made on the basis of the overall quality of the proposal and its appeal to a reasonable fraction of the Semantic Web and Knowledge Graph community. Other factors, such as overlap with other workshop proposals, will also be taken into account when making the final decision.

Workshop proposers are also invited to have a look at the Call for Challenges and think if they also want to submit a challenge proposal related to the workshop topics; proposers submitting to both tracks will be asked to explicitly indicate their coordinated intention.

Submission instructions

Proposal submissions should be done via EasyChair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iswc2024.

All submissions should be in English as a single PDF file no longer than 4 (four) pages, following the LNCS file format. For details on the LNCS style, please see Springer’s Author Instructions at https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines.

The proposal should contain the following sections:

• Workshop Title and Acronym
• Workshop Type: novel/established
• Abstract: 200 word summary of the workshop purpose
• Topics: What topics of interest will be covered by the workshop?

  Proposed workshops should have a core theme that is much more selective than the broader scope of the main conference. We may reject or propose to merge workshops that overlap significantly with other workshops in terms of theme.

• For novel and crossover workshops:

  Motivation: Why is the topic timely and of particular interest to ISWC participants?

  Audience and community: Who and how many people are likely to attend? Demonstrate that there is an existing community interested in the topic, e.g., by providing references for recent papers related to the core topic of the workshop and/or a discussion of why the workshop would attract submissions.

• For established workshops:

  Continuation: Why is it worthwhile to continue the workshop in 2024? Discussion may include novel topics that are emerging, external developments that prompt new challenges, etc. Workshops should also argue why they continue to be relevant and maintain a focused identity versus the main conference.

  Past Workshops: describe the development of the workshop series over the past 3-5 years, including quantitative information on submissions, accepted papers, and attendance.

• Proposed Length: Half-day or full-day
• Workshop Format: The intended mix of events, such as paper presentations, invited talks, panels, demos, and general discussion (either a tentative tabular schedule or a one paragraph summary).

  We welcome workshops with an innovative structure and a diverse programme that attracts various types of contributions and ensures rich interactions.

• Link to challenges: if the workshop proposers are submitting a proposal also to the call for Challenges, they should indicate this
• Organisational requirements: if the workshop needs specific room equipment beyond the obvious projector (e.g. poster stands, boards, markers, etc.)

  The actual availability of such equipment in the workshop rooms will be evaluated with the local organisation; the workshop proposers are highly advised to bring with them any useful material

• Review policy: if contributions will be peer-reviewed, whether, e.g. open review, double anonymous review, or single anonymous review will be used.
• Publication policy: the plans for preserving the workshop’s outcome, e.g., publication of workshop papers in an online repository like CEUR, invitation of selected papers to a journal special issue, etc.
• Chairs: Name, affiliation, email address, homepage, and short (one paragraph) biography of each chair, explaining the chair’s expertise in the workshop topic and experience in organising relevant events.

  We strongly advise having more than one chair, preferably from different institutions, bringing different perspectives to the workshop topic, ideally with a mix of both junior and senior researchers. We also strongly advise having a maximum of five workshop organisers.

• Program Committee: Names and affiliations of potential PC members (at least 50% of PC members should have been confirmed)

  We strongly encourage the workshop organisers to strive for gender, location, and institution diversity in the organisation and program committee, as well as efforts to broaden the participation of underrepresented and underserved minority groups.

Requirements upon acceptance

Accepted workshops will be required to prepare a workshop web page containing their call for papers and detailed information about the workshop organisation and timelines. The indicative timeline for workshop internal deadlines is indicated below. Workshop organisers may choose to offer a maximum deadline extension of one week. Please note that these are strict deadlines necessary to comply with the overall conference organisation.

While the ISWC workshop and local chairs will assist with the local organisation of the workshop, the workshop organisers will be responsible for conducting their own reviewing process, for publicity of their workshop, and for publishing proceedings (for example, electronically on CEUR), etc.

At least one workshop organiser must register for the conference within the early bird registration deadline and participate in-person in the workshop.

At the discretion of the workshop and tutorial track chairs, workshops may be cancelled if a workshop has received too few submissions or if the organisers have not registered in a timely manner, i.e., no organiser has registered for the conference before the early registration deadline.

Tentative timeline template for Workshop Organizers

The tentative timeline template for organizing a workshop is as follows (all deadlines are 23:59 AoE):

Workshop Chairs

Irene Celino – Cefriel, Italy

Raghava Mutharaju – IIIT-Delhi, India

For any question or request, please contact the Workshop Chairs at iswc2024-workshop-proposal@easychair.org