ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2009)
Special Track on Agreement Technologies
March 8 - 12, 2009
Waikiki Beach, Honolulu,
Hawaii, USA
http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2009/
CALL FOR PAPERS
We are pleased to solicit original,
unpublished and novel papers for publication and presentation in the 2009 ACM
Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) Track on Agreement Technologies ( http://www.iiia.csic.es/~jar/sacat09
). Articles describing novel ideas and applications in all areas of agreement
technologies are of interest. The 2009 ACM SAC Track on Agreement Technologies
will be held at Honolulu, USA from March 8-12, 2009.
The ACM Symposium on Applied
Computing is recognized as a primary forum for applied computer scientists and
application developers from around the world to interact and present their
work. SAC 2009 is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied
Computing (SIGAPP) and is presented in cooperation with other ACM Special
Interest Groups. For more information on ACM SAC 2009, please visit http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2009/.
AIMS AND SCOPE
Nowadays, most transactions and interactions for both business and leisure
applications are mediated by computers and computer networks. From email to
virtual worlds, the way people work and enjoy their free time has changed
dramatically in less than a generation. This change has led IT research and
development to focus on aspects such as new Human-Computer Interfaces or
enhanced routing and network management tools. However, the greater impact of
this pervasive use has been on the way that applications are conceived and
developed. These applications require components to which more and more complex
tasks can be delegated, components that show increasing levels of intelligence,
components that are capable of sophisticated modes of interacting with one
another and with human users, as increasingly they are massively distributed,
sometimes embedded in all sort of appliances and sensors.
There is therefore a need for the development
of models, frameworks, methods and algorithms for constructing large-scale open
distributed computer systems where autonomy, interaction and mobility are the key
characteristics. We envision that such technologies can be structured around
the concept of agreement among computational agents. The notion of agreement as
the glue that puts together computational agents in an open system is based on
three fundamental concepts: (1) a normative context, that determines “the rules of the game”, i.e. how the
interactions between agents are intended to take place, (2) the establishment
of an agreement for action between the agents that respects the normative
context, and (3) the fulfilment of any agreements reached by the participants.
Under the umbrella of agreement technologies we
consider the techniques and tools that enable software components to reach and
fulfil agreements on the mutual provision of services. For agreement
technologies to succeed in building next generation open distributed systems
there are many, diverse challenges: the semantic alignments between the
different ontologies employed by agents; the need for
negotiation, argumentation, coordination and social choice models to allow
agents to reach agreements with one another; the development of trust and
reputation models that deal with agents failing to honour their commitments
even when agreements are signed; formal models and tools for virtual organisations
and institutions defining normative contexts (the rules of the game), within
which to reach agreements; the need for learning models to adapt the rules of
the game within which to reach agreements; the adaptability of agents to cope
with different normative contexts within which to reach agreements that may
even change over time and a better understanding of agreement mechanisms by
means of game and decision theoretic results.
Topics covered include but are not
limited to:
- Negotiation
- Argumentation
- Computational social choice
- Decision and game theoretic foundations
for agreement
- Multi-agent resource allocation
- Trust and reputation
- Coordination and distributed decision
making
- Semantics of agreement (e.g. ontology representation,
ontology alignment)
- Models and tools for virtual organisations
and institutions
- Adaptability of virtual organisations and
institutions
- Middleware for virtual organisations and
institutions
- Normative contexts for virtual
organisations and institutions
- Applications of agreement technologies
(e.g. web service composition, contract automation, supply chain
automation, sensor networks, etc.)
PAPER SUBMISSION
Original papers from the
above-mentioned or other related areas will be considered. All papers should
represent original and previously unpublished work that are currently not under
review in any conference or journal. Both basic and applied research papers are
welcome.
Each submitted paper will be fully
refereed and undergo a blind review process by at least three referees. The
accepted papers in all categories will be published in the ACM SAC 2009
proceedings.
The author(s) name(s) and address(es) must NOT appear in the body of the paper, and
self-reference should be in the third person. This is to facilitate blind
review. Only the title should be shown at the first page without the author's
information.
Submit your paper electronically in either PDF or postscript format. The
author(s) name(s) and address(es) must not appear in
the body of the paper, and self reference should be in the third person. This
is to facilitate blind review. The body of the paper should not exceed 4,000
words.
Submission is entirely automated by
an eCMS paper management tool, which is available
from the main SAC Web Site: http://sac.cs.iupui.edu/SAC2009.
Authors must first register their own account by obtaining a password, and then
follow the instructions. Authors will use this system for formal paper
submission and other correspondence.
The camera-ready version of the
accepted paper should be prepared using the ACM format available at http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2009/downloads09.htm.
Accepted full papers cannot exceed 8 pages in a double column format. Notice
though that whereas the first 5 pages are free of charge, authors are given the
option, at additional expense of 80USD per extra page, to add three more pages.
Accepted poster papers will be published as extended 2-page abstracts in the
symposium proceedings.
Authors of accepted papers must be
prepared to sign a copyright statement and must pay the registration fee and
guarantee that their paper will be presented at the conference. To submit a
paper, author need to strictly follow guidelines at http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2009/.
We strongly suggest to use the available camera ready templates, and adhere to
the 5 page limitation.
After completing the submission,
please send also an email to: sacat09@iiia.csic.es.
The body of the email should include the title of the paper, the author(s)
name(s) and affiliation(s), and the address (including e-mail, telephone, and
fax) to which correspondence should be sent. The subject of the email should be
"SAC2009 AT track submission".
Registration is required for paper
and poster inclusion in the Conference Proceedings, and for event attendance.
PUBLICATION
Papers accepted for the Special
Track on Agreement Technologies will be published by ACM both in the SAC 2009
proceedings and in the Digital Library.
IMPORTANT DATES
Aug 16, 2008: Paper
Submissions Due
Aug 23, 2008: Paper Submissions
Due
Oct 11, 2008: Notification of paper
acceptance/rejection
Oct 25, 2008: Camera-ready copies of
accepted papers
March 8 - 12, 2009: Special Track on Agreement Technologies.
Please notice that the submission
deadline is **STRICT**. By no means we shall grant any extension.
ORGANIZERS
Jesús Cerquides
– University of Barcelona, Spain
Peter McBurney
– University of Liverpool, UK
Pablo
Noriega – IIIA-CSIC, Spain
Juan
A. Rodriguez-Aguilar, IIIA-CSIC, Spain
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Josep Ll. Arcos, IIIA-CSIC
Alexander Artikis,
National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos”,
Greece
Vicent Botti, Polytechnical University
of Valencia, Spain
Ruggiero Cavallo, Harvard University, USA
Carlos Chesñevar, Universidad Nacional del Sur,
Argentina
Mehdi Dastani, Utrecht University,
The Netherlands
John Debenham,
University of Sydney, Australia
Ulle Endriss, University of
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Marc Esteva, IIIA-CSIC, Spain
Alessandro Farinelli,
University of Southampton, UK
Shaheen Fatima, Loughborough University, UK
Andrea Giovannucci, University Pompeu
Fabra, Spain
Lluís Godo, IIIA-CSIC, Spain
Hiromitsu Hattori, Kyoto University, Japan
Takayuki Ito, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
Han La Poutré,
CWI, The Netherlands
Maite López-Sánchez,
University of Barcelona, Spain
Mike Luck, King’s College, UK
Sascha Ossowski, University
Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
Andrea Omicini, University
of Bologna, Italy
Simon Parsons, City University of
New York, USA
Henry Prakken, Utrecht University and University of
Groningen, The Netherlands
Iyad Rahwan,
British University of Dubai, Dubai
Sarvapali Ramchurn,
University of Southampton, UK
Alessandro Ricci, University of Bologna, Italy
Marco Schorlemmer, IIIA-CSIC, Spain
Sandip Sen,
University of Tulsa, USA
Onn Shehory, IBM, Israel
Carles Sierra, IIIA-CSIC, Spain
Simeon Simoff, University of Western Sydney,
Australia
Elizabeth Sklar, City University of New York, USA
Wamberto Vasconcelos,
University of Aberdeen, UK
Danny Weyns, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
INFORMATION
For further information please
contact: sacat09@iiia.csic.es