3^rd Workshop on Humanities in the Semantic Web - WHiSe III

Workshop chairs:

• Alessandro Adamou - Data Science Institute, NUI Galway, Ireland
• Marieke van Erp - KNAW Humanities Cluster, The Netherlands
• Albert Meroño Peñuela - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

DESCRIPTION

The emergence of tractable and affordable methods for the collection, enhancement and analysis of data generated en masse has helped shape several research fields, such as social sciences, into structured research fields. Digital Humanities are enjoying such a transformation to the point that their very boundaries and methodological foundations are being called into question. The quality and relevance of findings obtained from the thorough, human-driven analysis of a few sources, compared to unsupervised large-scale analytics on masses of data, is a fervent ongoing debate; and yet, the latter cannot prescind from a conscious effort in shaping the world to which the analyses need to relate.
This has largely taken the form of knowledge modelling efforts, from which many ontologies, controlled vocabularies and conceptual models like CIDOC-CRM, the Europeana Data Model and FRBRoo have arisen. However, other fields traditionally less reliant on machine-readable data have seen the emergence of "ecological" communities with an approach to the Web of Data. Recent examples include the 2014 ISAW papers for the ancient world, Transforming Musicology for music and musicology Transforming Musicology for music and musicology and Linked Pasts for history and archaeology. As these emerging research networks deal with the reality of the Semantic Web and the ever-growing Linked Data Cloud, the WHiSe workshop series was conceived from a reflection on the extent to which the Semantic Web community is serving the needs of historians, philologists, cultural critics, musicologists and other humanists that generally:

1. cannot rely on structured data generated en masse through social networks or online media platforms;
2. deal with vague, fragmentary, uncertain, contradictory and yet still valuable evidence that poses a challenge even to Artificial Intelligence research per se;
3. have good reason to value the systematic investigation of a few sources over the (semi-)automated analytical findings on masses of content. WHiSe addresses this need by promoting dialogue between humanists who employ or are contemplating Semantic Web technologies, and Semantic Web scholars providing accounts of applied research in the Humanities. It will also be a forum for raising opportunities to explore novel research problems that can be relevant to both communities.

WHiSe III welcomes original research contributions crossing Humanities and the Semantic Web. Scholars who have conducted research or developed impactful applications are invited to submit full papers (12 pages, Springer LNCS typeset) with appropriately evaluated contributions. WHiSe III also welcomes short vision or position papers (6 pages, Springer LNCS typeset) on novel challenges or approaches to existing problems.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Knowledge base generation from classical texts
• Linking data within and across gazetteers
• Semantic enrichment of data from historical records and biographies
• Ecosystems and process descriptions for linking data in the humanities
• Linked Digital Libraries and semantic archives
• Ontology adoption in specific domains in the humanities
• Knowledge graph construction and exploitation within and across domains
• Computational methods for the prosopography of historical figures
• Capturing, modelling and reasoning on musical data
• The role of ontologies and controlled vocabularies in data preservation
• Criticism of Semantic Web standards from the point of view of humanities scholarship
• Ethical issues in using Semantic Web and Linked Data and their impact on the openness of traditional research data
• Notions on integrating digital humanities and data science
• Knowledge bottlenecks and practical difficulties in using Semantic Web technologies by humanities scholars
• Utopian / dystopian visions of the Semantic Web of the future

Submissions in all the categories mentioned above (both full and short papers) will be peer-reviewed by acknowledged researchers familiar with both scientific communities.

Accepted papers will be published as online proceedings courtesy of CEUR-WS.org.

IMPORTANT DATES

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Papers will be evaluated according to their significance, originality, technical content, style, clarity, and relevance to the workshop. We welcome the following types of contributions:

• Full papers (up to 12 pages)
• Short papers (up to 6 pages)

All submissions must be PDF documents written in English and formatted according to LNCS instructions for authors (see here).

Page limits are inclusive of references and appendices, if any. Papers are to be submitted through the  Easychair Conference Management System.

Please note that paper submissions to WHiSe III are not anonymous.

At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the workshop, in order to present the paper there, and to the conference. For further instructions please refer to the LDK 2019 page.

PRIOR PUBLICATION AND MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS

Every submitted paper must represent original and unpublished work: it must not be under review or accepted elsewhere and there must be a significantly clear element of novelty distinguishing a submitted paper from any other prior publication or current submission.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE (to be extended)

• Elton Barker, The Open University
• Francesca Benatti, The Open University
• Victor de Boer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Enrico Daga, The Open University
• Rossana Damiano, University of Turin
• Marilena Daquino, Alma Mater Studiorum Università  di Bologna
• Paula Granados-Garcia, The Open University
• Eero Hyvönen, Aalto University and University of Helsinki (HELDIG)
• Ioanna Kyvernitou, National University of Ireland Galway
• Paul Mulholland, The Open University
• Silvio Peroni, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna
• Rainer Simon, Austrian Institute of Technology
• Konstantin Todorov, University of Montpellier
• Francesca Tomasi, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna
• François Vignale, Université du Maine

Date	Tuesday 6 November 2018
Time	9:30 – 12:00
Location	NIAS Conference Room, Korte Spinhuissteeg 3, Amsterdam
Registration	No registration necessary: everyone is welcome

We are very pleased to announce this forthcoming CLARIAH seminar with:

• Francesco Beretta (CNRS, Lyon/ Data for History Consortium) 
• Regina Varniene Janssen (Vilnius University, Research Centre for the Organization of Libraries and Information Lithuania).

The seminar aims to bring together researchers and other specialists implementing and developing ontologies and standards to improve interoperability of historical data. Although in recent years significant progress has been made in the systemic integration of heterogenous and diverse data sources, semantic interoperability is still very much an open issue for historical data. This event provides the opportunity for the CLARIAH community and the NWO project group of ‘Golden Agents’ to acquaint themselves with the international Data for History Consortium. This consortium aims to develop common ontological models for historical data as extensions to the conceptual framework of the CIDOC CRM.

Program

Last Saturday, October 6^th 2018, our dear colleague Conny Kristel passed away. She was 63 years old. Conny Kristel was senior researcherat NIOD, principal investigator of EHRI and former director of DARIAH. The EHRI project – now already in its second phase – is a very important European large-scale research infrastructure project that provides online access to information about dispersed sources on the Holocaust.

Working for research infrastructures is not something which is likely to be awarded in the academic world. It is, to a large extent, what has been called ‘care work’ - often invisible but highly important, as such work lays the foundation for any further research.

Conny Kristel dedicated an important part of her career to this service, and she did not restrict her dedication to her immediate research community of Holocaust research. For many years, as one of the directors of DARIAH, she contributed essentially to the formation of the European Research Infrastructure, in which researchers, archivists and librarians and ICT specialists come together to enable humanities research across all kinds of fields and domains on a truly European scale. Conny was able to bridge between visions of the digital age, the current state of our cultural memory (to a large extent still not digital), the needs of researchers and the curating heart of archivists and documentalists. A rare talent – too soon lost!

We offer our heartfelt condolences to Conny’s family and friends, and her colleagues at NIOD.

NIOD wrote an obituary (in English and Dutch)

For a personal testimony from DANS (in Dutch) see here.

10 October 2018

The 2018 Steven Krauwer Award for CLARIN Achievements was awarded to Daan Broeder (Meertens Institute, KNAW) and Pavel Straňák (Charles University) for their outstanding contributions toward CLARIN goals.

Daan brought his rich knowledge and expertise into CLARIN from the very start. He was involved in a range of national and international projects and activities that are highly relevant to CLARIN, both on a technical and non-technical level. Read more	Pavel has been working actively at CLARIN in Czech Republic and CLARIN ERICERIC and is one of the most active people in the CLARIN community. He is specialized in the area of mathematical linguistics and has brought prominent contributions to CLARIN both locally and internationally. Read more

DANS invites you for the colloquium 'Digging into Data - Humanities and Knowledge organization'

Date	4 October
Time	15:00 - 17:00
Location	Den Haag

The DANS R&D colloquium is a meeting place for researchers, archivists and ICT specialists. Organized by DANS, its focus is on research data and what you can do with it. You are invited to participate in discussing the challenge to keep data fixed and to invent tools that can evolve fast in a landscape that is on the move. If you have done projects in preserving and reusing data we find a slot for you to share your experiences.

The research consortium of the TA-P project 'Digging into the Knowledge Graph' is holding its consortium meeting October 3-5, 2018 in Amsterdam / The Hague.
On this occasion DANS organizes a Colloquium on the theme of Linked Data, Humanities research and the role of Knowledge Organisation Systems in it.

If you want to attend, please register online. If you have any questions, please ask Andrea Scharnhorst.