Call for papers: Special Issue on The Semantic Web and Linked Data: Security, Privacy and Policy

Call for papers: Special Issue on

The Semantic Web and Linked Data: Security, Privacy and Policy

Although the technology underpinning the Semantic Web and Linked Data has been in existence for a number of years, initially data publishers focused on exposing and linking static, public and open data. Indeed, much like e-Business on the Web was only made possible once security and privacy issues were adequately addressed, linked data and the semantic web might only evolve to a dynamic read/write distributed data source supporting the full spectrum of data and knowledge - from open to private and confidential - if we first provide solutions for challenges with respect to data security, privacy, policies, rights and licensing.

Although several existing network security and web service security mechanisms can be used in conjunction with the Web of Data, there are a number of new security challenges that need to be addressed. To date, much of the research efforts have focused on the specification of access policies that restrict who can access the data, however there are many open research questions with respect to the enforcement, administration, usability and scalability of the proposed security mechanisms. Here the term “access control” has a much broader connotation than simply controlling who can access the data and what operations they can perform, including for example aspects of digital rights management.

When it comes to interlinked web data there are also a number of new privacy challenges. From a legal perspective, there is a requirement to uphold existing legislation, which restricts the use of personal data beyond the scope with respect to which it was captured. From a societal perspective, web users today expect a certain level of control over their personal data, for example who can access their data and what the data consumers can do with the data once they have been granted access.

This special issue aims to explore issues with respect to the security, privacy and policy mechanisms, processes and methodologies that are now critically needed to support the next generation of electronic business applications over interlinked and semantic web data.

Topics of Interest

We welcome original high quality submissions on (but are not restricted to) the following topics:

  • Publishing data on the Web in the presence of confidential information
  • Privacy and security: enforcement, correctness and scalability
  • Methods for information flow control and accountability
  • Access policies, usability and understandability
  • Methods for policy governance
  • Access negotiation and explanations
  • Provenance, trust and metadata for authoritative sources
  • Data authenticity and integrity
  • Techniques for anonymity, pseudonymity and unlinkability in linked and semantic data
  • Dealing with inference in private, sensitive or confidential data
  • Protecting against pattern/behaviour discovery and community mining
  • Protecting against identity theft and data falsification
  • Encryption and digital signatures together with linked and semantic data
  • Data transparency and user consent on the Web of Data
  • Machine processing of and reasoning upon data licences and policies
  • Data licensing and policy propagation in linked data
  • Privacy legislation compliance and synchronisation of policies from different legal domains
  • User-friendly applications and interface design to interact with legal semantic information
  • Law, Intellectual property and legal issues for data and schemas
  • Law and governance in deliberative e-democracy and democratic e-participation
  • Semantic Web techniques and e-discovery in large legal document collections

Submissions

March 4, 2016 - Paper submission deadline (extended)

Submissions shall be made through the Semantic Web journal website at http://www.semantic-web-journal.net. Prospective authors must take notice of the submission guidelines posted at http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/authors. Note that you need to request an account on the website for submitting a paper. Please indicate in the cover letter that it is for the Special Issue on the Semantic Web and Linked Data: Security, Privacy and Policy.

Submissions are possible in the following categories: full research papers, surveys, application reports and case studies. While there is no upper limit, paper length must be justified by content.

Guest editors

  • Mathieu d'Aquin, Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University, United Kingdom
  • Sabrina Kirrane, Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI Galway, Ireland
  • Serena Villata, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France

The editors can be reached using the following email: swjsecurityprivacypolicy@googlegroups.com