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SPECIAL TRACK on METADATA & SEMANTICS for CULTURAL COLLECTIONS & APPLICATIONS
              Part of the 14th International Conference on
               Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR 2020)
                        VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

                 Paper Submission Deadline: 2nd  August, 2020

             Virtual Conference on 30th November - 4th December 2020
                      http://www.ionio.gr/labs/dbis/mtsr2020/
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The 14th International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR 2020), as well as the
SPECIAL TRACK on METADATA & SEMANTICS for CULTURAL COLLECTIONS & APPLICATIONS, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic will take place virtually on 30th November - 4th December 2020.

*** Submission deadline: August 2nd, 2020 ***

Proceedings will be published in Springer CCIS series. CCIS is abstracted/indexed in Scopus, SCImago,
EI-Compendex, Mathematical Reviews, DBLP, Google Scholar. CCIS volumes are also submitted for the
inclusion in ISI Proceedings.

AIM AND SCOPE
Cultural Heritage collections are essential knowledge infrastructures that provide a solid
representation of the historical background of human communities. These knowledge infrastructures
are constructed from and integrate cultural information derived from diverse memory institutions,
mainly libraries, archives and museums. Each individual community has spent a lot of effort
in order to develop, support and promote its own systems, tools and metadata for the management
of cultural information, mainly related to its particular resources and use.

In this framework, the management of the cultural information has to deal with challenges related to
(i) metadata modeling, specification, standardization, extraction, (semantic) enrichment, mapping,
integration, effective use, and evaluation, (ii) knowledge representation as conceptualization to
provide the context for unambiguously interpreting metadata, and (iii) information integration from
different contexts for the provision of integrated access, reuse and advanced services to users.

At the same time, there are also inter-domain efforts targeted to semantically align data (research
data, educational data, public sector information etc.) to cultural information. New challenges are
also emerged from the need to incorporate cultural information into the new publication paradigms,
where a variety of resources (data, metadata, processes, results, etc) are linked and integrated,
providing better shareability and reusability. Currently, Linked (Open) Data, as part of the
Semantic Web Technology, is having a major role in modernizing cultural heritage collections.
Providing to users the possibility to re-use and integrate data into their own systems is currently
more than a need, given that transparency and access to information is a prerequisite. A critical
factor to the effectiveness of many aspects of all the above efforts is the quality of metadata,
as interpreted by its context and use and evaluated by the proper measures and methods. Many
institutions and aggregate infrastructures are dealing with the poor quality of metadata that
inevitably results in poor integration, search and reuse, while their enrichment, in terms of
contextualization, co-referencing, alignment, etc, is really challenging.

The aim of this Special Track is to maintain a dialogue where researchers and practitioners working
on all the aspects of the cultural information will come together and exchange ideas about open issues
at all stages of the cultural heritage information life cycle. The track also welcomes works related to
semantics and applications for new approaches to cultural information publication and sharing, as well
as to interlinking to other datasets published in the Semantic Web universe.

TOPICS
The papers in this special track should be original and of high quality, addressing issues in areas
such as:
* Cultural Heritage metadata models, standards, ontologies, knowledge organization and representation systems
* Cultural Heritage information integration, interoperability and mappings
* Automated extraction of metadata, entities, and patterns from Cultural Heritage resources
* Metadata manual or automated (Semantic) enrichment and search
* Metadata quality metrics, tools and services
* Linked Open Data approaches in the Cultural Heritage domain
* Publication, linking and citation of Cultural Heritage information and resources
* Large volume content management
* 3D models-indexing, storage and retrieval approaches
* Infrastructures for sharing content
* Digital Curation workflows and models
* Provenance and preservation metadata for Cultural Heritage digital resources

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Authors can submit either full papers (12 pages) or short papers (6 pages). Submitted papers have to
follow the LNCS proceedings formatting style and guidelines.

Submissions should be original and not previously submitted, published and under review to other
Conferences or Journals.The submitted papers will undergo the same peer review as the submissions
for MTSR 2020 and accepted contributions will be published in the MTSR 2020 proceedings (Springer CCIS series).

Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the Conference and present their work.

Selected papers might be considered for a revised and extended version to be published in a range of
international journals, including the International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies
(Inderscience), and Data Technologies and Applications (previously published as Program, Emerald).
More information on submission can be found at the MTSR 2020 call for papers web page.

IMPORTANT DATES
August 2nd, 2020: Submission deadline
September 6th, 2020: Notification of decision (Acceptance/Rejection)
September 20th, 2020: Camera-ready papers due
November 30th - December 4th 2020: the Virtual MTSR 2020 Conference will take place

SPECIAL TRACK CHAIRS
* Michalis Sfakakis, Dept. Archives, Library Science and Museology, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece (sfakakis@ionio.gr)
* Lina Bountouri, Dept. Archives, Library Science and Museology, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece and
                  EU Publications Office - European Commission, Luxembourg (boudouri@ionio.gr, linabountouri@gmail.com)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
- Trond Aalberg, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway
- Enrico Fransesconi, EU Publications Office, Luxembourg, and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Firenze, Italy
- Manolis Gergatsoulis, Ionian University, Greece
- Antoine Isaac, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Sarantos Kapidakis, University of West Attica, Greece
- Christos Papatheodorou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Digital Curation Unit, IMIS, Athena RC, Greece
- Chrisa Tsinaraki, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Italy
- Andreas Vlachidis, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science, University of South Wales, UK
- Maja Žumer, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia