Agent Oriented Information Systems (AOIS@AAMAS)

[Our apologies if you receive it more than once]

                        Call for Papers

         Fifth International Bi-Conference Workshop on 
              Agent-Oriented Information Systems 
                          (AOIS-2003)

                      http://www.aois.org


                         Special Track 
                         -------------
                  Agent-Oriented Methodologies: 
                 Commonalities and Distinctions 

                           14 July, 2003
                              
                              at the
           The Second International Joint Conference on
         Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2003)
                       Melbourne, Australia
                http://www.aamas-conference.org/



Workshop Description and motivations
------------------------------------

Agent-Orientation is emerging as a powerful new paradigm in
computing. Concepts and techniques from the agents paradigm could well
be the foundations for the next generation of mainstream information
systems.  

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of
organizations today. In almost every sector -- manufacturing,
education, health care, government, and businesses large and
small-- information systems are relied upon for everyday work,
communication, information gathering, and decision-making. Yet the
inflexibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted
in poor performance, incompatibilities, and obstacles to change. As
many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges
of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to
develop and deploy new technologies that are flexible, robust, and
responsive to rapid and unexpected change.   

Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities
of information systems. They offer higher level abstractions and
mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and
reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among
heterogeneous and autonomous parties, perception, commitments, goals,
beliefs, intentions, etc. all of which need conceptual modelling. On
the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead
to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering,
transaction control, adaptive workflows, brokering and integration of
disparate information sources, and automated communication processes.
On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow more
faithful and flexible treatments of complex organizational processes,
leading to more effective requirements analysis, and
architectural/detailed design. The workshop will focus on how agent
concepts and techniques will contribute to meeting information systems
needs today and tomorrow. 

The workshop encourages submissions on all topics related to AOIS,
including (but not limited to) the following:       

* agent-oriented modeling and design methods 
* models and architectures for agent-oriented information systems 
* novel information system technologies based on software agents 
* agent-oriented requirements engineering 
* agents and knowledge management 
* agent-oriented approaches to data integration 
* agent-based workflow modeling 
* agent orientation and e-services/web services
* agent orientation in web information systems
* agent-oriented enterprise and business process modeling 
* agent communication languages for business communication 
* ontologies and agents 
* managing trust and reputation
* automated business-to-business interaction (including negotiation and 
contracting)    

Special Track:   (at AOIS@ AAMAS2003)
Agent-Oriented Methodologies -- Commonalities and Distinctions
--------------------------------------------------------------

The growth of interest in software agents and multi-agent systems has
recently led to the development of new methodologies based on agent
concepts.  Modeling languages and methodologies such as, Gaia, AAII,
AOR, MaSE, Message/UML, AUML, OPEN/Agent, Tropos, PASSI and Prometheus
among others) have become the focal point of attention in the emerging
area of agent-oriented software engineering.  These methodologies
propose different approaches in using agent concepts and techniques at
various stages during the software development lifecycle.  
  
To promote deeper understanding among and to foster synergy across
research efforts in the various methodologies, this special track
solicits research contributions that will identify, analyze, and
illustrate the commonalities and distinctions across different
methodologies.  Methodologies may differ in their objectives and
underlying premises, the way they deal with issues such as openness,
uncertainty, security, and autonomy, the extent of coverage over the
different phases of software engineering, the way they stress the
evolution, maintenance, and other non-functional qualities, and
eventually with respect to the tools and technologies that can support
them. Methodologies may also differ in generality, some focusing on
specialized application domains, or specific implementation
technologies.  A clarification of the similarities and differences
among methodologies is needed to guide the practitioner in choosing
which methodology to adopt for what applications and circumstances.  A
clearer understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various
methodologies, their compatibilities and divergences, will also be
crucial for further advancements in the development and potential
convergence of methodologies. 

Submitted papers must have agent orientation as a central
feature. They could include (but are not limited to) papers that:  

* contain a detailed exposition of one methodology using a case study
  and explaining what stages the methodology covers, possibly with
  direct comparisons to at least one other methodology; 
* focus on selected technical issues (e.g., evolution and maintenance,
  coordination and protocols, validation and verification), analyzing
  how one or more methodologies deal with those issues, using a case
  study as much as possible to illustrate; 
* analyze and illustrate how selected agent concepts (e.g., roles,
  responsibilities, capabilities, intentionality, autonomy, dependency
  networks and trust) are used in different methodologies, and the
  consequences of those different approaches; 
* describe the decisions and commitments supported by one methodology
  in the development process, possibly showing what kinds of analyses
  are used to support these decisions;  
* compare a methodology to other agent-based methodologies as well as
  other non-agent-based methodologies (for instance, object-oriented,
  component-based, etc.); 
* present from practical experience the methodological difficulties
  and challenges  a  methodology may face, possibly proposing
  requirements and evolution criteria for evaluating methodologies
  from practical prospective. 

Workshop Format
--------------- 
To foster greater communication and interaction between the
Information Systems and Agents communities, we are organizing the
workshop as a bi-conference event. It is intended to be a single
"logical" event with two "physical" venues. It is hoped that this 
arrangement will encourage greater participation from, and more
exchange between, both communities. The first part of the
bi-conference event in 2003 will be held in July at AAMAS 2003, and
the second in October at the 22nd International Conference on
Conceptual Modeling (ER03 - http://www.er.byu.edu/er2003/).   

The event at the ER03 conference will be co-chaired by Brian
Henderson-Sellers (Faculty of Information Technology, University of
of Technology, Sydney, Australia) and in order to make stronger the 
connection with the IS modeling community we plan to have at AAMAS
invited speakers that are more from the IS side. 

The technical program will include invited talks,  contributed papers,
and poster sessions.  Authors of accepted papers who present their
paper at one location will also be invited to present their papers as
a poster in the other location.  

Publication of selected papers from the workshop in a special issue of
a journal is being planned. 

Invited Talk
--------------------

We are very pleased to have Andrew J. I. Jones of King's College London present
the invited talk. 


Submission of Papers
--------------------

To submit a regular paper as a postscript or pdf file, authors should
either send it by  email (or place it on a web server and send its URL) to 
pgiorgini-FT9nftu9LUzcgg55IwzFLuG/Ez6ZCGd0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx A separate message 
with 
the title, author names, affiliations, contact information and an
abstract has to be sent. Papers must be at most 15 pages.

Submitted papers must be formatted using the Springer LNCS style.
Templates (llncs.cls, llncs.sty, or sv-lncs.dot) are available at:
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

Papers for the special track (Agent-Oriented Methodologies -- Commonalities and
Distinctions) should be clearly identified.

Position Papers
---------------

In addition to full length, refereed papers, we are also seeking position
papers.  These can be submitted by email to 
pgiorgini-FT9nftu9LUzcgg55IwzFLg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx in ps or
pdf format. 


Your position paper should not exceed 2 pages. It must either 
  1. discuss a specific problem, or 
  2. attack a specific position, or 
  3. articulate a specific technology forecast. 

You must indicate under which of these three categories your position paper
falls. A problem discussion must begin with a section called Problem Statement
and must conclude with a section called Research Questions. An attack
must first describe the position to be attacked in neutral language
before it presents reasons why it should be rejected. A technology
forecast should consist of one or more forecast statements with
additional explanation.  

Please have a look at our  list of research questions at
http://www.aois.org/CfPP.html


Important dates:
---------------

  Abstract submissions                  March 30, 2003
  Paper submissions                     March 31, 2003 
  Notification                          May 6, 2003
  Position paper submissions due:       May 16, 2003
  Camera-ready papers                   May 16, 2003



Organization commitee:
----------------------

Co-chairs:
----------

Paolo Giorgini 
Department of Information and Communication Technology
University of Trento,Italy
Email:paolo.giorgini-reGABNQHgu//wltNWqQaag@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.dit.unitn.it/~pgiorgio

Michael Winikoff
School of Computer Science and Information Technology
RMIT University
Email: winikoff-MTgBGfZJYvW7NGdpmJTKYQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web page: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~winikoff


Steering Committee:
-------------------

Yves Lesperance
Department of Computer Science 
York University, Canada
Email://lesperan-syTJIgLXA8osA/PxXw9srA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web page: http://www.cs.yorku.ca/~lesperan

Gerd Wagner
Department of Information & Technology, 
Eindhonven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Email: G.Wagner-ejtfMRhQEjBmR6Xm/wNWPw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web page: http://tmitwww.tm.tue.nl/staff/gwagner

Eric Yu
Faculty of information Studies,
University of Toronto, Canada
Email: eric.yu-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web page: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~eric


Program Committee:
------------------

(this is a partial list since some PC members have not yet been confirmed)

- B. Blake (Georgetown University, USA)
- P. Bresciani (ITC- irst, Italy)
- H.-D. Burkhard (Humboldt Univ., DE)   
- L. Cernuzzi (Universidad Catolica, Paraguay)
- L. Cysneiros (York University, Toronto)
- F. Dignum (Univ. of Utrecht, NL) 
- B. Espinasse (Domaine Universitaire de Saint-Jerome, France)
- I.A. Ferguson (B2B Machines, USA) 
- T. Finin  (UMBC, USA) 
- A. Gal (Technion - Israel Institute of Technology)
- U. Garimella (Andra Pradesh Govt., MSIT, India) 
- A.K. Ghose (Univ. of Wollongong, AU) 
- B. Henderson-Sellers (University of Technology, Sydney,AU)
- M. Huhns (Univ. S. Carolina, USA) 
- G. Karakoulas (CIBC and Univ. Toronto, CA) 
- K. Karlapalem (Indian Inst. of Information Technology, India)  
- L. Kendall (Monash University, Australia) 
- D. Kinny (University of Melbourne) 
- S. Kirn (Techn. Univ. Ilmenau, DE) 
- M. Kolp (Universite catholique de Louvain, Belgium)
- N. Jennings (Southampton University, UK) 
- G. Lakemeyer (RWTH Aachen, DE) 
- Y. Lesperance (York University, CANADA)
- D.E. O'Leary (Univ. of Southern California, USA) 
- F. Lin (Hong Kong Univ. of Science and Technology, HK) 
- J.P. Mueller (Siemens, DE) 
- J. Odell (James Odell Associates, USA) 
- O. F. Rana (Cardiff University, UK)
- M. Schroeder (City Univ. London, UK) 
- N. Szirbik (Eindhonven Univ. of Technology, The Netherlands)
- C. Woo (Univ. British Columbia, CA)  
- Y. Ye (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center,NY) 
- B. Yu (North Carolina State University, USA)
- F. Zambonelli (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy) 

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