From: erincody@buffalo.edu   
      
   Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS)   
      
      
      
   Special Issue   
      
   on   
      
   Ontologies in the Context of Information Systems   
      
      
      
      
      
   Guest Editors   
      
   Rajiv Kishore and R. Ramesh   
      
   School of Management   
      
   SUNY at Buffalo   
      
   Buffalo, NY 14260-4000   
      
      
      
   JAIS SE: Yair Wand   
      
   Sauder School of Business   
      
   University of British Columbia   
      
   Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z2   
      
      
      
      
      
   Introduction   
      
      
      
   Ontology as "the metaphysical study of the nature of being and existence" is   
   as old as the discipline of philosophy. More recently, ontology has been   
   defined as "the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects,   
   properties, events, processes, and relations in every area of reality."   
   While it remains a fertile area of research in the field of philosophy,   
   ontology has been a subject matter of inquiry, development, and application   
   for quite some time now in disciplines related to computation, information,   
   and knowledge. Recently there has been an explosion in the interest and   
   application of ontological principles in a number of disciplines, including   
   chemistry, enterprise management, geography, linguistics, mathematics,   
   medicine, etc., to create domain-specific ontologies. As a result, while the   
   philosophy discipline still treats ontology in the singular because it deals   
   with the nature of all reality, other disciplines take a rather narrower   
   view of ontology and use it only in the limited context of domain-specific   
   reality. Consequently, there is no more ontology but ontologies, and each   
   individual ontology in a particular domain deals with only a limited portion   
   of reality that is pertinent to that domain. The goal behind creating   
   domain-specific ontologies is to structure and codify knowledge about the   
   concepts, relationships, and axioms/constraints pertaining to that domain in   
   a computational format so that it can be manipulated and utilized by the   
   computer to aid human and machine agents in their performance of tasks   
   within the domain.   
      
      
      
   Ontologies can become a fruitful subject of inquiry and development in the   
   information systems (IS) discipline. Information systems are essentially   
   knowledge artifacts that capture and represent knowledge about certain   
   domains (e.g. in the form of entities, relationships, constraints, and   
   processes). Consequently, IS professionals and researchers have   
   traditionally dealt with issues of identifying, capturing, and representing   
   such domain knowledge within information systems. Philosophical ontology has   
   been utilized in the IS discipline in the past as a basis for evaluating   
   systems analysis modeling techniques and grammars. Ontological principles   
   have also informed the development of organizational knowledge ontologies   
   and knowledge management systems. Clearly, this area of work remains a   
   fertile area for research. Recently the notion of "ontology-driven   
   information systems" (ODIS) has also been proposed that opens up new ways of   
   thinking about ontologies and IS in conjunction with each other and covers   
   both the structural and the temporal dimensions of information systems. In   
   the structural dimension, ontologies can provide mechanisms for structuring   
   and storing generic IS content including database schemas, user interface   
   objects, and application programs that can be customized and integrated into   
   a functioning IS. In the temporal dimension, ontologies can guide the   
   development of new information systems by helping analysts/designers choose   
   appropriate processes, algorithms, rules, and software components depending   
   upon their needs. It has also been suggested recently that ontologies,   
   frameworks, and systems are essentially knowledge artifacts at different   
   levels of knowledge abstraction and, therefore, systems can be generated   
   from bounded-universe ontologies through specialization and combination. It   
   also appears that the emerging paradigms such as web services and the   
   semantic web will enable the large-scale development, deployment, and   
   sharing of ontologies and ontology-driven information systems.   
      
      
      
      
      
   Coverage   
      
      
      
   The special issue of JAIS invites high-quality conceptual, analytical and   
   empirical articles representing original contributions dealing with the   
   design, technical, managerial, behavioral, and organizational aspects of   
   ontology-driven information systems. Potential topics include but are not   
   limited to:   
      
      
      
   o        Role of ontologies in information systems   
      
   o        Evaluation of systems analysis modeling techniques using   
   ontological principles   
      
   o        Ontologies as a reuse-enabling platform for information systems   
   development   
      
   o        Ontologies as representation languages vs. ontologies as knowledge   
   bases   
      
   o        Ontologies and object-orientation   
      
   o        Modeling and design of ontologies   
      
   o        Conceptual and formal representation of ontologies   
      
   o        Metrics for ontologies and ontological engineering   
      
   o        Ontological quality assessment   
      
   o        Representing behavioral knowledge and constraints in ontologies   
      
   o        Tools and environments for ontology development   
      
   o        Relationships between ontologies, frameworks, patterns, and   
   components   
      
   o        Learning ontologies and maintenance of ontologies   
      
   o        Evolution and growth of ontologies   
      
   o        Onto-mining: Mining and knowledge discovery from Ontologies   
      
   o        Modeling and design of ontology-driven information systems   
      
   o        Organizational and process models for ontology-driven information   
   systems   
      
   o        Ontologies for enterprise systems, integrative business information   
   systems, and workflow systems   
      
   o        Use of ontologies for organizational knowledge management and   
   knowledge management systems   
      
   o        Co-design of business and IT using ontologies   
      
   o        Modeling Web services components using ontological principles   
      
   o        Modeling the semantic web as an ontology   
      
      
      
      
      
   Review Process   
      
      
      
   All submissions will be peer-reviewed following the review process of JAIS.   
      
   JAIS follows a developmental review process, unlike the traditional review   
   process. The objective is to apply very high standards of acceptance while   
   ensuring fair, timely and efficient review cycles. For more details see the   
   JAIS Special Issue on Ontologies website at   
   http://www.mgt.buffalo.edu/jais_special_issue_on_ontologies.   
      
      
      
      
      
   Time Table   
      
      
      
     1.. PHASE A: Extended Abstracts Due:  December 15, 2003   
     2.. PHASE A: Feedback from Editors: January 15, 2004   
     3.. PHASE B: Full Initial Papers Due: April 15, 2004   
     4.. PHASE B: Editorial Review Cycles Completed by: July 15, 2004   
     5.. PHASE B: Workshop Presentations: Date TBD   
      
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