Special Issue "Metadata and Markup"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Andreas Dengel
Member of the Management Board, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Trippstadter Str. 122, D-67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
Website: http://www.dfki.de/~dengel
E-Mail:
Interests: semantic web; information & knowledge management; search; social media; document understanding; human-computer interaction

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue of the journal Future Internet seeks papers reporting high quality theoretical or practical work on Metadata and Markup. As data about data, metadata describes information about documents, events, locations or people but also addresses qualitative aspects, language, and include information about context or conditions of use. It may be used for naming, describing, cataloguing, and indication ownership of a resource. Metadata helps to facilitate the understanding and the management of data objects. While the metadata describes characteristics about the data, the markup identifies the specific type of data content and acts as a container for that document instance. Mark-up languages allow for the inclusion of many types of metadata ranging from simple dates or keywords up to highly-granular information such as Dublin Core or e-GMS.

We are looking for high-quality, original papers on any aspect of Metadata and Markup including topics such as standards for supporting knowledge markup, e.g., RDFa, microformats, GRDDL, multimedia annotation (e.g., by using MPEG-7), collaborative, shared tagging and annotation, semantic annotation in Semantic Wikis, semantic authoring and publishing, document engineering, deriving semantics from document structure and content, ontology-based authoring and markup, knowledge markup in the Semantic Web, using semantic annotations to define knowledge, integrated software architecture based on semantic annotation, annotation of software components, linguistic aspects of semantic annotations, text mining for creating knowledge markup, mining semantic information from blogs, forums or news sources, collaborative, shared tagging and annotation, evaluation of annotation frameworks, deriving formal semantics from (flat or hierarchical) tagging systems, vocabularies and ontologies for semantic authoring and annotation, tools for supporting knowledge markup, semantic annotation, sematic authoring, etc.

Andreas Dengel, Ph. D.
Guest Editor

Submission Information

All papers should be submitted to futureinternet@mdpi.org. To be published continuously until the deadline and papers will be listed together at the special issue website.

Submitted papers should not have been published nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Future Internet is a new international, peer-reviewed, quarterly open access journal published by Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI).

Open Access publication is free of charge in the first few issues to be published in 2009.

• metadata and the web
• semantics, semantic web
• metadata capture and creation
• metadata lifecycle
• metadata schemes and ontologies
• defition of metadata

Title: Intelligent Dynamic Thesaurus for Metadata and Markup Language Concept for a Learned Field
Authors: Dr. Prof. Eberhard R. Hilf et al.; E-mail: hilf@isn-oldenburg.de
Affiliation: Institute for Science Networking Oldenburg GmbH an der Carl von Ossietzky Universitaet Ammerlaender Heerstr.121, D-26129 Oldenburg, Germany
Abstract: To be added soon

Type of Paper: Article
Title: An Infrastructure for Metadata about Metadata: The HDMM Architectural Style and PORTAL-DOORS System
Author: Dr. Carl Taswell; E-mail: ctaswell@telegenetics.net
Affiliation: Global TeleGenetics, Inc., 8 Gilly Flower Street, Ladera Ranch, CA 92694, USA
Abstract: To be added soon

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Ontology-driven Knowledge Management for Cognitive Networks
Author: Dimitris Kanellopoulos
Affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Patras, Patras, GR 26500 Greece; Tel.: +30 2610997833; E-mail: d_kan2006@yahoo.gr
Abstract: Cognitive networks are still in their infancy and are visualized for efficient and autonomic management of increasing complexity of communication networks. A cognitive network (CN) is self-aware, self-configuring, self-optimizing, self healing and self-protecting. Therefore, it has knowledge about itself, its building blocks and their interconnection, and can share this knowledge and reason based on this. Two vital elements for developing a CN are knowledge representation and the cognition loop. In this paper, we survey existing research work on cognitive networks that refers to ontological network representations for telecommunication network management. We provide a summary of artificial intelligent techniques that are appropriate for the development of a CN. Architectural proposals which are based on ontologies and fulfill the requirements for a CN are also presented.
Keywords: cognitive networks; self-aware; autonomic networks; knowledge representation

Title: The E-Science Issue
Authors: Magali Roux‍‍^1,2 and Jean-Gabriel Ganascia1
Affiliations: ¹ Laboratoire d’Informatique de Paris VI (LIP6-CNRS) 104, avenue du Pt Kennedy, F- 75016 Paris, France
² Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST-CNRS) 2, Allée du Parc de Brabois CS 10310 F -54519 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France; E-mail: Magali.Roux@lip6.fr
Abstract: In natural sciences, data are produced by experiments to test theories or to discriminate among concurrent hypothesis. The design of experiments requires setting up all the elements, conditions and relations under investigation. Usually, the scientists have in mind some implicit representations of the phenomenon they study, which can be progressively modified. They need to write down their hypotheses, their observations and their conclusions in his/her own laboratory notebook where they are kept unless they are published. In e-sciences, scientists use computer-intensive resources to process, analyze and store data. This expands human cognitive capabilities just as the microscope revealed details hidden from the naked eye. So, as result, it becomes possible to a scientist to analyze massive data sets, by integrating his/her own data to those produced by foreign laboratories, even so, by using data for purpose unforeseen when it was collected. These new approaches ground on data- and text-mining require widespread metadata sets, which describe the nature and the origin of data sets. In e-biology, different initiatives came out recently for organizing metadata collection, based on frameworks designed by domain-specific consortia. In spite of their usefulness, they are some thresholds to these multiple standardized representations that introduce their own constraints and limitations just as they exist between optical and electronic microscopy. In this review, metadata collect organizations, good practices and formats developed by e-biology will be compared to initiatives in other e-sciences (particle physics, astronomy and astrophysics) with special attention to efforts made to unravel cost-intensive and time-consuming gathering. Putative impacts of e-sciences on natural sciences will be discussed with respect to human- and machine-understandable knowledge representation.

Title: Ontology Alignment - a Survey with Focus on Semi-automatic Techniques
Authors: Michael Granitzer, Vedran Sabol, Kow Weng Onn, Dickson Lukose and Klaus Tochtermann; E-mail: ktochter@know-center.at
Abstract: Semantic technologies are of paramount importance to the future Internet.Reuse and integration of semantically described resources, such as data or services, necessitates bringing ontologies into mutual agreement. Ontology alignment deals with (semi-) automatic discovery of correspondences between concepts and relations from different ontologies, providing the key ingredient to semantic interoperability. This paper gives an overview on the state of the art in the field and presents recent trends and developments. Particular attention is given to semi-automatic approaches and user interface techniques supporting involvement of humans in the alignment process.

Type of Paper: Article
Author: Olivier Glassey; E-mail: olivier.glassey@idheap.unil.ch
Title: Metadata for Identity Management of Population Registers
Abstract: In June 2006 the Swiss Parliament adopted a new law on population registers' harmonization in order to simplify statistical data collection and data exchange from around 4'000 decentralized registers. Besides there are more than 2'000 administrative services delivered to Swiss citizens and businesses, of which hundreds could potentially use data from population registers. The law is rather vague about the implementation of this harmonization and even though many projects are currently being undertaken in this domain, most of them are quite technical. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework to define metadata for identity management withing these population registers.

Title: Usage Metadata for Digital Photos
Authors: Philipp Sandhaus¹ and Susanne Boll²
Affiliations: ¹ OFFIS Institute for Information Technology, Escherweg 2, 26121 Oldenburg, Germany
² University of Oldenburg, Ammerländer Heerstraße 114-118, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany; E-mail: susanne.boll@informatik.uni-oldenburg.de
Abstract: Metadata plays in important role for the management of digital photos with the photos' content and context being the primary sources for automatic metadata derivation. Interestingly, so far little attention has been spent on capturing and exploiting the usage of photos. In this paper we show how usage metadata can contribute to a better semantic understanding of photos. For this we identify different kinds of usage metadata such as as when was a photo edited and how, for which purposes has it been used, or whom was it given to and provide a usage metadata model to represent this data. We interpret the photos' usage history to derive more meaningful semantic annotations than it is possible with conventional content- and context analysis. The second contribution of this paper is the presentation of a novel framework for the intelligent fusion of content, context and usage metadata which enables for high-quality and semantically rich photo annotations. This analysis framework is employed for the intelligent management of personal photos such as the determination of a meaningful selection or the automatic authoring of personal photo albums. Additionally we show how our approach can be applied to other domains such as product management in retail, the selection of press photos or even to other media types such as video.

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Can Global Visual Features Improve Tag Recommendation for Image Annotation?
Authors: Mathias Lux 1, Arthur Pitman 1, and Oge Marques 2; E-mail: omarques@fau.edu
Affiliation: 1 Klagenfurt University, Klagenfurt, Austria.
2 Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA.
Abstract: Recent advances in the fields of digital photography, networking and computing have made it easier than ever for users to store and share photographs. However without sufficient metadata, e.g., in the form of tags, photos are difficult to find and organize. In this paper, we describe a system that recommends tags for image annotation. We postulate that the use of low-level global visual features can improve the quality of the tag recommendation process when compared against a baseline statistical method based on tag co-occurrence. We present results from experiments conducted using photos and metadata sourced from the Flickr photo website that suggest that the use of visual features improves the mean average precision (MAP) of the system and increases the system's ability to suggest different tags, therefore justifying the associated increase in complexity.
Keywords: Image retrieval; Multimedia; Metadata; Folksonomies; Tagging; Image annotation; Tag recommendation

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Web 4P
Author: Dominikus Heckmann; E-mail: heckmann@dfki.de
Abstract: to be added

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Advancing Knowledge Management Through Intelligent Tags for Contextual Scenarios
Author: Brian J. Garner, Deakin University; E-mail: Brian.Garner@deakin.edu.au
Abstract: The increasing volume of printed and digital media that is required to be examined by Governments and Knowledge Workers in the discharge of their respective responsibilities is now a Global challenge despite rapid expansion of Information specialists, such as librarians, and Internet Services.
The use of conceptual structures in domain representation and in business processing has now been extended using Contextual Scenarios to the generic problem of indexing and retrieving reasoning themes, processes and models, with major implications for Knowledge Management processes.
The scope of this research addresses five propositions:
1.-‘The Open Access Movements’, including Social Networking ( Web 2.0) tools, requires Context Identification processes in thematic analysis, narrative summarisation and in the extraction of propositions for argumentation and scenario derivation.
2.-Intelligent Tag structures are required to differentiate Contextual meaning in Hypotheses, Propositions and Conceptual Scenarios.
3.-Representations of Business processes and models are evolving in scope, complexity and computational inconsistency.
4.-Public Policy statements, Regulations and the Professional Practice edicts/recommendations of Professional Bodies often lack adequate explanation in terms appropriate to the Global knowledge level of practitioners.
5.-Global E-Learning requirements and trends are poorly supported by tagging/tracing methods and techniques, with consequent difficulty for Educators and tutors in their attempts to extract self-consistent pedagogies .

The reported difficulty of finding employees with the requisite skills, despite high unemployment in many countries, is expected to exacerbate the Global problem of integrating Knowledge Networks.