FOIS 2025: 15th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems University of Catania Catania, Italy, September 8-12, 2025

Conference website	https://www.dmi.unict.it/fois2025/
Submission link	https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fois2025
Abstract registration deadline	March 23, 2025
Submission deadline	March 30, 2025

The FOIS conference is a meeting point for all researchers with an interest in formal ontology. Formal ontology is the systematic study of the types of entities and relations making up the domains of interest represented in modern information systems. The conference encourages submission of high quality, not previously published results on both theoretical issues and practical advancements. FOIS 2025 will have distinct tracks for foundational issues, ontology applications and methods, and domain ontologies.

FOIS aims to be a nexus of interdisciplinary research and communication for researchers from many domains engaging with formal ontology. Common application areas include conceptual modeling, database design, knowledge engineering and management, software engineering, organizational modeling, artificial intelligence, robotics, computational linguistics, the life sciences, bioinformatics and scientific research in general, geographic information science, information retrieval, library and information science, as well as the Semantic Web.

FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA), which is a non-profit organization promoting interdisciplinary research and international collaboration in formal ontology.

Important dates

• Mandatory abstract submission: 23 March 2025 (strict)
• Paper submission: 30 March 2025 (strict)
• Rebuttal period: 9-14 May 2025
• Notifications: 19 May 2025
• Camera-ready papers: 30 June 2025 
• Virtual conference: 4-5 September 2025
• Onsite conference: 8-12 September 2025

The submission deadline for workshops will be after the main track notifications to allow authors to submit, to suitable workshops, revised versions of rejected papers or additional papers containing late-breaking results.

Location

FOIS 2025 will be hosted by the University of Catania and consist of two parts: 

1. An online part, to be held on 4-5 September 2025.
2. An in-person part, to be held on 8-12 September 2025, in Catania, Italy. 

To plan for this two-part event, authors must at the time of submission indicate their preference and constraints for presenting either in-person or online. See more details below.

Topics of interest

Areas of interest to FOIS include, but are not limited to:

Foundational issues

• Kinds of entities: particulars/universals, continuants/occurrents, abstracta/concreta, dependent entities/independent entities, natural objects/artifacts, events/processes
• Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence, constitution, causality, subsumption, instantiation
• Vagueness and granularity
• Space, time, and change

Methodological issues

• Top-level vs. domain-specific ontologies
• Role of reference ontologies
• Ontology similarity, integration, alignment, matching and entity reconciliation
• Ontology modularity, patterns, and contextuality
• Ontology evaluation, quality, reuse, adaptation, and evolution
• Ontology compliance with FAIR principles
• Formal comparison among ontologies
• Relationship between conceptual modeling and ontologies
• Relationship with cognition, language, semantics, and context
• Connections between knowledge graphs and ontologies
• Methodological issues in the applications of ontologies
• Social issues, such as trust or bias, with respect to ontologies 

Applications

• Technical applications of ontologies, such as
  • Semantic Web
  • Other areas of AI (Machine Learning, Explainable AI, Rules)
  • Qualitative modeling
• Systems applications of ontologies, such as
  • Ontology-driven information systems design
  • Ontology-based data access
  • Knowledge management
  • Information retrieval
  • Computational linguistics
  • Metadata management
• Domain applications of ontologies, such as
  • Ontologies for business modeling
  • Ontologies for particular scientific disciplines (biology, chemistry, geography, physics, geoscience, cognitive sciences, linguistics, etc.)
  • Ontologies for engineering: shape, form and function, artifacts, manufacturing, design, architecture, etc.
  • Ontologies for the humanities: arts, cultural studies, history, literature, philosophy, etc.
  • Ontologies for the social sciences: economics, law, political science, anthropology, archeology, etc.
  • Ontologies for Open Science and dataset sharing

Domain-specific ontologies

• Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, etc.)
• Ontology of biological reality (organisms, genes, proteins, cells, etc.)
• Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions, emotions, perceptions, cognition, etc.)
• Ontology of artifacts, functions, capacities and roles
• Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms, social relationships, artistic expressions, etc.)

Submissions

FOIS 2025 seeks full-length high-quality papers on three tracks:

• Foundational track: for papers that address content-related ontological issues, their formal representation, and their relevance to some aspect of information systems.
• Application and Methods track: for papers that address novel systems, methods, and tools related to building, evaluating, or using ontologies, emphasizing the impact of ontology contents.
• Domain Ontology track: for papers that describe a novel ontology for a specific realm of interest, clarifying ontological choices against requirements and foundational theory, and showing ontology use.

Submission instructions

• Papers must be submitted via Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fois2025
• For each submission, authors must specify the track they believe best suits their work, as well as  their presentation preference (see more details below).
• Authors are limited to a maximum of two first-authored submissions, with no limit to the number of co-authored submissions. Any individual may present no more than two accepted papers.

Paper format requirements

Submitted papers must:

• not exceed 14 pages (including bibliography);
• include an abstract of no more than 300 words;
• be anonymized;
• be submitted in the PDF format;
• be formatted according to the IOS Press formatting guidelines, which may be found at https://www.iospress.nl/service/authors/latex-and-word-tools-for-book-authors/.

Presentation preferences

When submitting a paper, authors must indicate their availability to present the paper in-person or online, choosing one of the following options:

1. Only in-person (not willing or able to present online)
2. Prefer in-person presentation but will present online if asked to do so
3. No preference: will present either in-person or online
4. Prefer online presentation but will present in-person if asked to do so
5. Only online (not willing or able to present in-person)

Acceptance will be either for in-person presentation or for online presentation, at which time authors can no longer change the modality. 

Since the numbers of in-person and online presentations are limited, we encourage authors to be as flexible as possible to maximize your chance of paper acceptance. The program chairs will take these preferences in consideration when deciding on the acceptance of the papers.. 

Reviewing Process

Each paper will be reviewed by at least 3 members of the program committee and 1 member of the senior program committee, who will provide a meta-review. 

All reviews will be anonymous. 

These reviews will then be shared with the authors, who will have the opportunity to rebut criticisms to their papers that are factually incorrect. Rebuttals should not be used to answer reviewers criticisms, justify methodological decisions, or promise improvements to the submission. 

Rebuttals will be at most 300 words long.

With the rebuttals, the senior program committee members will be allowed to amend their meta-reviews, if necessary, and make a recommendation on whether the paper should be accepted or rejected. 

A final decision will then be made by the program committee chairs.

Accepted papers will then have the FAIRness of their related artifacts evaluated (if applicable). If an artifact is not FAIR enough according to the FAIR4FOIS guidelines, the authors will be informed and allowed time to improve their submission by the camera-ready deadline. 

Only papers that fulfill the FAIR requirements will be published in the FOIS proceedings.

Review criteria

Foundations track

• Scope: foundational papers address content-related ontological issues, their formal representation, and their relevance to some aspect of information systems. Foundational papers may explore domain general ontological topics (e.g., mereology) or be concerned with general categories (e.g., papers on upper ontologies). Papers concerned with the philosophical, logical or mathematical foundations of applied ontology are also included in this track.
• Review criteria: will consider (1) the significance and clarity of the problem statement; (2) the novelty and weight of the ontological / philosophical / logical / mathematical analysis; (3) the soundness of any formalism, (4) the relevance to some aspect of information systems; and (5) the adequate satisfaction of issues or requirements from the problem statement. If the paper contains theorems without proofs, the proofs should be made available to reviewers as an appendix to the paper. The page limit will not be applied to this appendix, and the appendix will not be included in the final publication.

Applications and Methods track

• Scope: papers in this track address novel methods, systems and tools related to building, evaluating, or using ontologies, emphasizing the impact of ontology contents on the application. If a paper is about how ontologies are used in some computational system, such as for recommendation, semantic search, or machine learning, or if it is about new methods or tools that, for example, help design, evaluate, modularize, or compare ontologies, then it belongs in this track.
• Review criteria: will follow typical computer science criteria, including the novelty, significance and soundness of the work as evident in the problem statement and requirements, the related work, as well as the methodology and evaluation, with evaluation typically including implementation, results, and analysis.

Domain Ontology track

• Scope: domain ontology papers describe a novel ontology for a specific realm of interest. The goal is not just to reproduce the content of the ontology in some abbreviated form, but to provide added value enabling a reader to better understand and use the ontology. Hence, the paper should focus on providing: (1) background information and an overview of contents (e.g., motivation, domain, scope, requirements, ontology language, modularity, statistical information); (2) a comparison with related ontologies to highlight differences and benefits; (3) a description of methodology and ontology design choices; (4) an evaluation of the ontology against requirements and possibly foundational theory, and (5) discussion of actual or potential use. Moreover, all ontologies discussed in the paper should be accessible to reviewers.
• Review criteria: will consider the novelty, significance, and soundness of the required elements (just listed above).

Publication

The FOIS proceedings will be published by IOS Press as open access.

We will adopt a post-proceedings format, i.e., the camera-ready version of the papers will be due after the conference. This allows authors to incorporate not only the feedback given by the reviewers, but also those received at the conference.

Authors will be allowed one extra page when preparing the camera-ready versions of their papers.

Contact

For questions related to this call, please send a message to main-fois2025 [at] easychair.org.

For general questions about conference, please contact fois2025 [at] easychair.org.