Metadata and Semantics
for Agriculture, Food and Environment

The 5th International Workshop on Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food and Environment is hosted as a special track of MTSR 2012, and aims to bring together researchers and practitioners that are working on agricultural, food-related and environmental knowledge production, organization, and exchange from a Semantic Web perspective.

It is an international discussion forum, where interested experts will present the results of their work, and establish liaisons with other groups that are working on related subjects. In addition, it aims to outline the rich potential of these subjects as an application field for advanced metadata- and semantic-driven systems and services. Topics include but are not limited to contributions dealing with the following issues in the context of agriculture, food and environment:

• Information standards and specifications
• Metadata schemas and application profiles
• Multilingual vocabularies, taxonomies, glossaries and thesauri
• Metadata generation, harvesting, and exchange
• Knowledge acquisition, elicitation and extraction
• Infrastructures, systems and services for knowledge organization
• Knowledge repositories and archives
• Ontology approaches, models, theories, and languages
• Ontology development, integration, lifecycle, and evaluation
• Management of large ontology-driven knowledge bases

July 20 August 3, 2012	Paper submission
September 1, 2012	Acceptance/Rejection notification
September 15, 2012	Camera-ready (revised) papers due
November 28-30, 2012	MTSR 2012 in Cadiz, Spain

Interested authors can submit either full papers (12 pages) or short papers (6 pages) about complete or ongoing research. Papers should be original and not previously submitted elsewhere. Papers should be formatted according to the Springer Book style. All submissions will be reviewed at least by 2 members of the program committee.

Paper submission system is available online. We have adopted Open Conference Systems, an open-source, open-archives solution, part of the Public Knowledge Project.

Click here to submit a paper!

Springer will publish MTSR 2012 accepted papers in an edited book in the CCIS Series. Best papers of the conference will be selected in revised and extended versions, as journal articles for a forthcoming special issue.

All accepted papers of the previous Workshops on Agricultural Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food and Environment have been published in MTSR proceedings, part of the Springer CCIS Series: vol. 240 (MTSR 2011), vol. 108 (MTSR 2010), and vol. 46 (MTSR 2009).

Session Chairs

• Nikos Manouselis, Agro-Know Technologies (Greece)
• Ioannis N. Athanasiadis, Democritus University of Thrace (Greece)
• Johannes Keizer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy)

Steering Committee

• Sander Janssen, Alterra, Wageningen UR (The Netherlands)
• Yves Jaques, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy)
• Vangelis Karkaletsis, NCSR Demokritos (Greece)
• Andrea E. Rizzoli, IDSIA (Switzerland)
• Meng XianXue, The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (China)

Program Committee

• Howard Beck, University of Florida (USA)
• Christopher Brewster, Aston University (UK)
• Caterina Caracciolo, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Italy )
• Jack Carlson, Colorado State University (USA)
• Kathryn Donnelly, Norwegian Institute of Food Fisheries and Aquaculture Research (Norway)
• Ed Dowding, Sustaination (UK)
• Hannes Ebner, MetaSolutions AB (Sweden)
• Urban Ericsson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden)
• Nikos Houssos, National Documentation Center (Greece)
• Pankaj Jaiswal, Oregon State University (USA)
• Martin Kaltenböck, Semantic Web Company (Austria)
• Maria Keet, University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa)
• Stasinos Konstantopoulos, NCSR Demokritos (Greece)
• Diane Le Hénaff, INRA (France)
• Daniel Martini, Association for Technology and Structures in Agriculture, KTLB (Germany)
• Sasa Nesic, IDSIA (Switzerland)
• Lyubomir Penev, Pensoft Publishers (Bulgaria)
• Vassilis Protonotarios, Agro-Know Technologies (Greece)
• Dave Roberts, The Natural History Museum (UK)
• Inigo San Gill, LTER, University of New Mexico (USA)
• Salvador Sánchez-Alonso, University of Alcala (Spain)
• Armando Stellato, University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy)
• Lieke Verhelst, Alterra - Wageningen UR (The Netherlands)
• Karen Vignare, Michigan State University (USA)
• Zhang Xuefu, The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (China)

The 6th International Conference on Metadata and Semantic Research (MTSR 2012) will be hosted by the University of Cadiz, Spain from 28th to 30th of November 2012. It will take place at Aulario La Bomba, now named Edificio Constitucion de 1812 after the bicentenary of the promulgation of the first Spanish Constitution, nicknamed La Pepa.

The beautiful and historical city of Cadiz is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the Iberian Peninsula and has been a principal home port of the Spanish Navy since the accession of the Spanish Bourbons in the 18th century. The city is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network.

MTSR 2012 targets researchers and practitioners from the fields of metadata and semantics research as, well as applications of the Semantic Web and related technologies.

For more details on travel and accommodation, see the MTSR 2012 conference webpage.