CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

"Soft Computing for Information Retrieval on the Web"

edited by Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Gabriella Pasi, and Fabio
Crestani

published by Springer-Verlag in the series "Studies in Fuzziness
and Soft Computing".

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The concept of soft computing (SC) was introduced by Lotfi Zadeh
as a synergy of methodologies that collectively provide a
foundation for the conception, design, construction, and
utilization of adaptive and flexible systems. Some of the main
methodologies encompassed by SC are fuzzy logic, genetic
algorithms, neural networks, rough sets, Bayesian networks, and
other probabilistic techniques. The main characteristic of SC is
that it is tolerant to imprecision, vagueness, partial truth, and
approximation. Subjectivity, vagueness, and imprecision are
typical properties of any information retrieval (IR) activity. The
key point of SC is to provide an acceptable solution at low cost
by seeking an approximate solution to problems. Soft computing
techniques have been used satisfactorily to improve IR processes,
and actually many authors are focusing on their application to
solve the different IR problems recently appearing in the
 Web.

The goal of this book is to show recent advances on SC approaches
to information retrieval and information access on the Web.
Specific topics of interest of this book include, but are not
limited to, the search engines, web filtering systems, Web
intelligent agent systems, Web digital libraries, Web quality
evaluation, hypermedia information systems, web multilingual
information systems, Internet meta-searcher systems, e-commerce
applications, text categorization on the Web, Semantic Web, Web
mining, Web personalization systems, Web visualization, user
modelling for Web information retrieval, query languages,  where
the information retrieval and information access processes are
modeled and/or managed using SC techniques, for example, fuzzy
sets and/or its hybridisation with the other SC techniques.

The schedule for the preparation of the book is the following:

- By January 7, 2005  we should receive an e-mail from you
confirming your intention to submit a paper, including a tentative
title. This should be sent to the organizers' email addresses given 
at the bottom of this mail.

- By February 28, 2005, we shall receive the contributions. The
contributions should be uploaded to
http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/external/softwebir/.

- By April 15, 2005, we shall send contributors the results of the
refereing process.

- By May 31, 2005, we shall receive the final versions of the
accepted papers in camera-ready prepared according to the Springer 
format.

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Enrique Herrera-Viedma (viedma@decsai.ugr.es)
Gabriella Pasi (gabriella.pasi@itc.cnr.it)
Fabio Crestani (F.Crestani@cis.strath.ac.uk)
Editors