IOSPress

In recent years, the dramatic growth of information and communication technologies has led to an increasingly interdisciplinary approach to research and development activities in these fields. To exploit the immense opportunities of widespread networks effectively, designers of modern information systems need to combine the precision of formal semantics with the needs of cognitive transparency, as they incorporate increasingly sophisticated and heterogeneous information content. The recent explosion of interest on ontologies is an important component of this trend. Researchers in disciplines such as knowledge engineering, information systems modeling, artificial intelligence, formal and computational linguistics, information retrieval, library science, and knowledge management have come to realize that a solid foundation for their research calls for serious work in ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations that make up their respective domains of inquiry. In all these areas, attention has started to focus squarely on the content of information, rather than on just the formats and languages used to represent that content.

Applied Ontology focuses on information content in its broadest sense. As the subtitle makes clear, two broad kinds of content-based research activities are envisioned: ontological analysis and conceptual modeling. The former includes any attempt to investigate the nature and structure of a domain of interest using rigorous philosophical or logical tools; the latter concerns the cognitive and linguistic structures we use to model the world, as well as the various analysis tools and methodologies we adopt for producing useful computational models, such as information systems schemes or knowledge structures.

Applied Ontology is the first journal with explicit and exclusive focus on ontological analysis and conceptual modeling under an interdisciplinary view. It aims to establish a unique niche in the realm of scientific journals by carefully avoiding unnecessary duplication with discipline-oriented journals. For this reason, authors will be encouraged to use language that will be intelligible also to those outside their specific sector of expertise, and the review process will be tailored to this end. For example, authors of theoretical contributions will be encouraged to show the relevance of their theory for applications, while authors of more technological papers will be encouraged to show the relevance of a well-founded theoretical perspective. Moreover, the journal will publish papers focusing on representation languages or algorithms only where these address relevant content issues, whether at the level of practical application or of theoretical understanding. Similarly, it will publish descriptions of tools or implemented systems only where a contribution to the practice of ontological analysis and conceptual modeling is clearly established.

Applied Ontology aims at being a major publication forum for theoretical and applied research in a variety of topics, tentatively grouped together in research areas, examples of which are indicated in the list below.

Foundational issues
• Philosophical foundations of ontology
• Basic ontological categories and relations
• Ontology, epistemology, and semiotics

Specialized ontologies
• Ontology of time, events and processes
• Ontology of space and geography
• Ontology of physics and physical objects
• Ontology of biomedicine
• Ontology of mental entities
• Ontology of agents and actions
• Ontology of organizations and social reality
• Ontology of the information society
• Ontology of business and e-commerce
• Ontology of law
• Ontology of history, culture and evolution

Ontology development and ontology-driven conceptual modeling
• Methodologies for ontology development
• Impact of ontological analysis on current modeling practices
• Best-practice examples and case studies

Ontology management
• Tools for ontology development, analysis and comparison
• Comparison and evaluation of ontologies
• Ontology management, maintenance, versioning
• Methodologies for ontology merging, alignment, and integration
• Semantic Web

Ontology and language
• Ontology and natural-language semantics
• Ontology and lexical resources
• Ontology and terminology
• Ontology learning techniques and their evaluation
• Role of ontology in natural-language systems

Ontology, cognition, perception
• Conceptual schemas, perceptual invariances and ontological categorization
• Psychological experiments evaluating the cognitive adequacy of ontological categories

Ontology and content standards
• Library science
• Knowledge organization
• Museums and cultural repositories
• Multimedia content
• Product descriptions
• Process and service descriptions
• Biomedical and other scientific terminologies

Innovative ontology-based applications

All correspondence concerning editorial matters as well as information regarding submissions should be sent to the Assistant Editor:
Roberta Ferrario
Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies
National Research Council
Via alla Cascata 56/C
38100 Povo (Trento)
Italy
Tel.: +39 0461 314841
Email: roberta.ferrario@loa.istc.cnr.ir

Authors are requested to submit their manuscript electronically to www.mstracker.com. Note that the manuscript should be uploaded as one file with tables and figures included. This file can be a Microsoft Word document or an Adobe PDF. Only after an article has been accepted for publication source files and separate files for each figure are required.

Required files
After the article has been accepted, the following electronic files are required:
a word processor file of the text, such as Word or LateX. If using LaTex please use our LaTeX template and also send a pdf version of the LaTeX file separate files of all figures (if any); see "Preparation of manuscripts" for the required file formats.

Colour figures
It is possible to have figures printed in colour, provided the cost of their reproduction is paid for by the author. See Preparation of Manuscripts for the required file formats.

PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS
Organization of the paper and style of presentation
Manuscripts must be written in English and American spelling should be used consistently throughout the manuscript. Authors whose native language is not English are recommended to seek the advice of a native English speaker, if possible, before submitting their manuscripts.

You can also visit www.internationalscienceediting.com. International Science Editing offers a language and copyediting service to all scientists who want to publish their manuscript in scientific peer-reviewed periodicals and books.

Manuscripts should be prepared with wide margins and double spacing throughout, including the abstract, footnotes and references. Every page of the manuscript, including the title page, references, tables, etc., should be numbered. However, in the text no reference should be made to page numbers; if necessary, one may refer to sections. Try to avoid the excessive use of italics and bold face.

Manuscripts should be organized in the following order:
- Title page
- Body of text (divided by subheadings)
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Tables
- Figure captions
- Figures

Headings and subheadings should be numbered and typed on a separate line, without indentation.

SI units should be used, i.e., the units based on the metre, kilogramme, second, etc.

Title page
The title page should provide the following information:
- Title (should be clear, descriptive and not too long)
- Name(s) of author(s); please indicate who is the corresponding author
- Full affiliation(s)
- Present address of author(s), if different from affiliation
- Complete address of corresponding author, including tel. no., fax no. and e-mail address
- Abstract; should be clear, descriptive, self-explanatory and not longer than 200 words, it should also be suitable for publication in abstracting services
- Keywords.

Tables
Number as Table 1, Table 2 etc, and refer to all of them in the text.
Each table should be provided on a separate page of the manuscript. Tables should not be included in the text.
Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title.
Column headings should be brief, but sufficiently explanatory. Standard abbreviations of units of measurement should be added between parentheses.
Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead.
Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table.

Figures
Number figures as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, etc and refer to all of them in the text.
Each figure should be provided on a separate sheet. Figures should not be included in the text.
Colour figures can be included, provided the cost of their reproduction is paid for by the author.
For the file formats of the figures please take the following into account:
- line art should be have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi, save as EPS or TIFF
- grayscales (incl photos) should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (no lettering), or 500 dpi (when there is lettering); save as tiff
- do not save figures as JPEG, this format may lose information in the process
- do not use figures taken from the Internet, the resolution will be too low for printing
- do not use colour in your figures if they are to be printed in black & white, as this will reduce the print quality (note that in software often the default is colour, you should change the settings)
- for figures that should be printed in colour, please send a CMYK encoded EPS or TIFF

Figures should be designed with the format of the page of the journal in mind. They should be of such a size as to allow a reduction of 50%.
On maps and other figures where a scale is needed, use bar scales rather than numerical ones, i.e., do not use scales of the type 1:10,000. This avoids problems if the figures need to be reduced.
Each figure should have a self-explanatory caption. The captions to all figures should be typed on a separate sheet of the manuscript.
Photographs are only acceptable if they have good contrast and intensity.

REFERENCES
Authors are requested to use the APA citation style. Authors are responsible for checking the accuracy of all references and that all references cited in the text also appear in the References section at the end of the article. This section should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author. Use the following style when referencing an article in a periodical or a book:

Bull S., Brna, P. abd Pain, H. (1995). Extending the scope of the student model. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 5, 45-65.

O’Shea, T and Self, J.A. (1983). Learning and Teaching with Computers: Artificial Intelligence in Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

COPYRIGHT
Copyright of your article
Authors submitting a manuscript do so on the understanding that they have read and agreed to the terms of the IOS Press Author Copyright Agreement.

Quoting from other publications
An author, when quoting from someone else's work or when considering reproducing figures or table from a book or journal article, should make sure that he is not infringing a copyright. Although in general an author may quote from other published works, he should obtain permission from the holder of the copyright if he wishes to make substantial extracts or to reproduce tables, plates or other figures. If the copyright holder is not the author of the quoted or reproduced material, it is recommended that the permission of the author should also be sought. Material in unpublished letters and manuscripts is also protected and must not be published unless permission has been obtained. Submission of a paper will be interpreted as a statement that the author has obtained all the necessary permission. A suitable acknowledgement of any borrowed material must always be made.

PROOFS & PURCHASES
PDF Proofs
The corresponding author will receive a pdf proof and is asked to check this proof carefully (the publisher will execute a cursory check only). Corrections other than printer's errors, however, should be avoided. Costs arising from such corrections will be charged to the authors.

How to order reprints, a pdf file, journals, or IOS Press books
The corresponding author of a contribution to the journal is entitled to receive 1 copy of the journal free of charge, unless otherwise stated. Free copies will not be provided for conference proceedings and abstract issues. An order form for reprints, additional journal copies or a pdf file will be provided along with the pdf proof.

If you wish to order reprints of an earlier published article, please contact the publisher for a quotation.

IOS Press
Fax: +31 20 6870039
Email: editorial@iospress.nl

An author is entitled to 25 % discount on IOS Press books. See Author's discount (25%) on all IOS Press book publications.