ITC Conference Grants are available! If you are interested, please send an email to francesco.guerra@unimore.it

The KEYSTONE MC opened a new call for STSMs. The Mission has to be finished by October 7.  The deadline for the submission is June 1, the notification on June 15). All the details here.

Due to a number of requests and to accomodate a larger number of interesting papers, the deadline for the 3rd International KEYSTONE Conference (IKC 2017) has been extended to June 5th, 2017.
You are encouraged to send your contributions according to the CFP that you can find here:
http://www.keystone-cost.eu/ikc2017

**Location: Gdańsk, Poland**
**Dates: 11-12 September 2017**
**Submission deadline  15  May 2017, Anywhere on earth**
**Author notifications 1 July 2017**
**Website:** http://www.keystone-cost.eu/ikc2017/
Since large-scale data sources are usually comprised of a very large schema and billions of instances, keyword search over such datasets offers several challenges mainly related to scalability, interpretation of the keyword query intended meaning. Whereas state-of-the-art keyword search techniques work well for small or medium-sized databases in a particular domain, many of them fail to scale on large heterogeneous databases. The discovery of suitable, i.e. semantically-related data sources, is another critical issue, hindered by the lack of sufficient information on available datasets and endpoints. Browsing and searching data on such a scale is not an easy task. Semantic search can support the process aiming at leveraging semantics to improve the accuracy and recall of search mechanisms.
The Third International KEYSTONE Conference is a place where academic and industrial researchers can meet, disseminate scientific results, share new ideas and start joint research activities, all related to the challenges mentioned above. The goals are broader than those of traditional academic conferences. For this reason the usual presentation sessions that aim at disseminating new outcomes and training, are intermixed with brainstorming sessions aiming at promoting the discussion, inter/intra domain cross fertilization and at enabling new joint research activities among the partners. The conference is the last event organised by Cost Action IC1302 during which a special emphasis will be put in summarising and promoting goals reached during the project.
As an event organized by an EU COST Action, the participation in conference does not require any registration fees.
The Conference offers 2 tracks:
– Research Track, where regular papers will be presented
– Demo/Poster Track, where we invite for presentation the best experiences achieved thanks to the KEYSTONE Cost Action  IC1302 i.e. reports from STSMs, joint projects, research  developed during the action.
Contributions could fall within the following indicative topics, or other related.
– Keyword search on big data
– Keyword search on graph databases and the Semantic Web
– Use of Linked Data
– Information Retrieval
– Information discovery and extraction
– Development of techniques and tools for Search and Analytics
– Social Web
– Search-based interaction
– Privacy in keyword search
– Benchmarking for keyword search
Authors are invited to submit their work in the form of full research paper (max 12 pages), or a short paper (max 6 pages) or in the form of a demo/poster (max 4 pages). Demos/Posters should prefix the title of their submission with the word: “[Demo]” or “[Poster]”. Submissions should be done electronically using the easychair (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ikc2017) All research contributions should be original and not published elsewhere. The papers should be written in  english and formatted according to guidelines of  Springer’s LNCS/LNAI:
http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
Accepted research papers will be published after the conference in the proceedings of Springer LNCS (confirmation pending). The publication of the papers in the proceedings is subject to the presentation in the conference by one of the authors.
##Organization (Pc-chairs)
– Julian Szymański, Gdańsk University of Technology, PL
– Yannis Velegrakis,University of Trento, IT
Local Organization
–  Tomasz Boiński, Gdańsk University of Technology, PL

The MC on February 20 decided to open a new call for STSMs. The Mission has to be finished by April 23.  The deadline for the submission is March 2, the notification on March 9). All the details here.

The main theme for the 3rd KEYSTONE Summer School will revolve around the topics of Keyword Search and Big, Linked Data.
Big Data and Linked Data are becoming an important and integral part of the web infrastructure, where massive amounts of data are available, connected and identifiable via Uniform Resource Identifiers. The use of Big, Linked Data for organisational and enterprise purposes is considered to be one of the next big challenges in the evolution of the Web. Big Data takes account of the fact that new techniques and technologies are needed for the sustainable and socially balanced exploitation of huge data pools. The Linked Data paradigm is one approach to cope with Big Data, as it advances the hypertext principle from a web of documents to a web of rich data. Both branches are being described as crucial driving forces in the next generation economies.
There are numerous topics of interest that can be considered for the 2nd KEYSTONE summer school. The list can include (and is however not limited to) :

keyword-based navigation and search over Big,Linked data
quality of Big, Linked Data
semantic annotation and expansion for keyword queries
keyword query interpretation and disambiguation for Linked Data
fusing, cleaning, ranking and refining search results
scalability and performance of distributed queries
federated search over Big, Linked Data
clustering in support of keyword search over Linked Data
technologies for Big, Linked Data

The level of the lectures can be of an introductory, intermediate or advanced nature. Apart from lectures and hands-on sessions the event should also include a hackathon.
Expressions of interest to organise this event are now open. Interested parties should send an email to charlie.abela@um.edu.mt  and cc francesco.guerra@unimore.it by Feb 18, 2017.

The KEYSTONE MC/WG members interested in the organization of the event should send their proposal via email to francesco.guerra@unimore.it by Feb 13.
The applications will be evaluated by the KEYSTONE MC in the 6th MC Meeting in Belgrade Serbia on 20 February.
To support the organization of the proposals a spreadsheet is available in google drive
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1irBJoARWfP-VKgycwX6QrLARStL9N3NoXs7tQUQAkgE/edit?usp=sharing
If you would like to participate in the organization, but you don’t want to be the main responsible, you can collaborate with other WG Members. In that case, you should write in the spreadsheet which is your specific availability and you could be asked to enter in one of the proposal coordinated by other KEYSTONE WG members. If you want to candidate your city as the place where to organize the conference, include this in the spreadsheet.
The proposal should include the following details:
1. Organizers / Team
This refers to the General chair, Program chair and the other leading positions.
The organizers have to be at least from 2 different countries among the ones participating in KEYSTONE http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/ict/Actions/IC1302?parties
2. Conference theme and topics addressed
The Conference theme and topics addressed should be consistent with the main objectives of the general theme “Big data, semantic keyword search in structured data sources”.
3. Structure of the event
The conference should:
a. Couple traditional presentation sessions (to achieve the state of the art and disseminate new techniques) with brainstorming sessions (to promote the discussion, inter/intra domain cross fertilization and enabling new joint research activities among the partners).
b. Promote the participation of industrial partners to provide keynotes about their research needs and possible applicative scenarios.
In this section, the applicants should shortly describe the “structure” of the conference they plan to organize, including the number and features of the presentation sessions, the number and features of the brainstorming sessions, and whether they plan to organize tutorials, keynotes, “competitions”, poster sessions, …
4. Location
The proposers should indicate if they have already contacted a Local Organizer or if they need a support for deciding the location.
5. Timing
The conference will take place in September 2017. The applicants should define the timing of the main steps (issuing the call, deadline for the paper submissions, notification, …)
6. Visibility / Dissemination
The proceedings of the first/second editions have been published by Springer. The organizers should manage the contacts with Springer for the publication of the current ones. The proposers should indicate if they plan to organize special issues in international journals including  the best papers.
7. Early Career Investigators –ECIs-
One of the COST policies is related to Early Career Investigators, who should particularly benefit from a COST Action. Is there any activity addressed for increasing the involvement / participation of ECIs?
8. Gender Balance
One of the COST policies is related to Gender Balance. Is there any activity addressed for increasing Gender Balance? Is the proposal (in terms of organizers) balanced?

According to the “Memorandum of Understanding” of the KEYSTONE IC1302 COST Action, a book summarizing the main achievements reached in the Action should be published at the end of the Action (October 2017). Nevertheless, it has not been decided t specified the “kind” of book, how to select the contributions (by a call, by an invitation), and how to select the editors.
If you are interested in being an editor, please send via email to francesco.guerra@unimore.it your nomination along side a description on how you believe the book and the whole effort should be organized. The deadine for doing so is February 13, 2017. If you need to share you idea with others in order to find potential co-editors to share the load, fill up the info also here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PadaH9RIUqB5x2sGkRaNaRinSO8U4Dj7EST1IAAqtIk/edit?usp=sharing