Conceptual Structures: Leveraging Semantic Technologies

The nature of conceptual thinking constitutes a central topic in a variety of scienti?c disciplines. Since 1993, the International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS) has served as a platform that brings together researchersand practioners in information and computer sciences as well as social science to explore novel ways of representing and analyzing conceptual knowledge. Ori- nally centered around research on knowledge representation and reasoning with conceptual graphs, over the years ICCS has broadened its scope to include in- vations from a wider range of theories and related practices, among them other forms of graph-based formalisms like RDF or existential graphs, formal concept analysis, Semantic Web technologies, ontologies, concept mapping and more. Today, ICCS draws inspiration from areas as diverse as arti?cial intelligence, knowledge representation and reasoning, applied mathematics and lattice t- ory, computational linguistics, conceptual modeling and design, diagrammatic reasoning and logic, intelligent systems and knowledge management. In addition to vivid conferences, the vibrancy of the ?eld is documented by two recently published books (Hitzler, Scha ¨rfe (Eds): Conceptual Structures in Practice and Chein, Mugnier: Graph-based Knowledge Representation: C- putational Foundations of Conceptual Graphs) as well as by an ISO standard (“Common Logic”, ISO/ IEC 24707) which orginated in this community.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2009, which took place in Moscow, Russia, on July 26-31, 2009.

The 18 papers presented together with 5 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from approximately 50 submissions. Originally centered around research on knowledge representation and reasoning with conceptual graphs, over the years ICCS has broadened its scope to include innovations from a wider range of theories and related practices, among them other forms of graph-based formalisms like RDF or existential graphs, formal concept analysis, semantic Web technologies, ontologies, concept mapping and more.