1st call for papers for the IFOW 2025 Integrated Food Ontology Workshop, Catania, Italy Sept 8-12
Damion Dooley
Announcing 1st call for papers and presentations at the sixth annual full-day Integrated Food Ontology Workshop (IFOW) within the Joint Ontology Workshop (JOWO) programme of the Formal Ontology in Information Systems Conference (FOIS) 2025 at the University of Catania, Italy September 8 -12!
The application of ontologies to food systems involves a number of perspectives that altogether promise a more stable, permanent open-source vocabulary which can evolve incrementally to describe food system behaviour as it spans from ecosystem and anthropogenic source, to individual and population-level nutritional and socioeconomic import. Philosophical discussion of food semantics helps to arrive at a consensus model/language of food materials, roles, dispositions, functions, and processes – a middle/upper-level ontology that we can all agree upon. A technical / applied ontology perspective brings structure and tools for vocabulary curation, quality control, lookup, and reuse, as well as application focus on food related biosample collection, plant or animal breeding, robotics, industrial automation, etc. A sociotechnical view wraps all of this work into a broader interdisciplinary “lingua franca of data science” effort to blend tangential domains of knowledge – from life science, animal and plant rearing, industrial and distribution infrastructure, food traceability, and regulatory management towards public and environmental health and security. Our time of rapid change demands narratives that identify, anticipate and explain courses of action to alleviate hunger, food insecurity, environmental degradation and climate change, narratives that rely on ontologies to salvage learning by enabling precise integration and comparison of past and present food system research and production data.
IFOW has successfully run in the last 5 years, attracting 30-60 participants in person and online across the academic, government and industry spectrum who have a mandate in data sharing and/or research in agriculture, nutrition, consumer behaviour, food science, or public health sectors. Past promotions highlight our topics:
- https://foodon.org/icbo-2020-food-workshop/ Bolzano Italy
- https://foodon.org/ifow-2021-workshop/ Bolzano Italy
- https://foodon.org/ifow-2022-workshop/ Jönköping Sweden
- https://foodon.org/ifow-2023-workshop/ Sherbrooke Canada
- https://foodon.org/ifow-2024-workshop/ Enschede Netherlands
The workshop accepts full papers for presentation as well as 10 minute presentation-only content aimed at keeping up to date on ontology activity in the food systems space. We encourage submissions in all aforementioned areas, including:
- Ontology of agricultural production
- Ontology in food entities and food processing, nutrition and food science, food safety, food security, food waste
- Ontology of food consumer behaviour
- Food ontology applications including recipe representations
- Ontology in regulatory practices and international trade and public health
- Large Language Models (LLMs): Improving food ontologies using content generated by LLMs; Using food ontologies to verify content generated by LLMs; Fine tuning LLMs for the Food domain
- March 11: 1st call for paper and presentation submissions
- June 1: Submission deadline for full papers and for 2 page presentation abstracts. Submit to: https://easychair.org/conferences2/overview?a=33948395
- June 21: author acceptance notification
- Sept 5: Final slide presentation submission
- TBD (8th or 9th September): IFOW workshop day
Contributions to IFOW can be published in a joint open access CEUR proceedings volume (unless opting out), within the IAOA series at CEUR (http://ceur-ws.org/iaoa.html).
Paper format requirementsSubmitted papers must:
- be 6 to 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 CEUR formatting guidelines for regular or short paper (see “CEURART style section), which may be downloaded here.
10 minute presentation abstracts should be described as a CEUR formatted abstract in 2 pages of text, anonymized, with references added on top of that.
Organizing Committee
Damion Dooley damion...@sfu.ca, Simon Fraser University (primary contact)
Michaela Kümpel, Universitaet Bremen
Robert Warren, Glengarry Agriculture and Forestry
Anoosha Sehar, Simon Fraser University
Felix Bindt, Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment
Ido Toxopeus, Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment
Larisa Soldatova, Goldsmiths University of London
Duccio Cavalieri, Università degli Studi di Firenze
Laurette Dube, McGill University
Miezah Ebenezer Kwofie, McGill University
Andrea Borghini, UMIL/Culinary Mind
Renata Guizzardi-Silva Souza, University of Twente
With gratitude,
The IFOW Organizing Committee
Damion Dooley
This is the second call for papers and presentations at the sixth annual full-day Integrated Food Ontology Workshop (IFOW) within the Joint Ontology Workshop (JOWO) programme of the Formal Ontology in Information Systems Conference (FOIS) 2025 at the University of Catania, Italy September 8 -12!
The application of ontologies to food systems involves a number of perspectives that altogether promise a more stable, permanent open-source vocabulary which can evolve incrementally to describe food system behaviour as it spans from ecosystem and anthropogenic source, to individual and population-level nutritional and socioeconomic import. Philosophical discussion of food semantics helps to arrive at a consensus model/language of food materials, roles, dispositions, functions, and processes – a middle/upper-level ontology that we can all agree upon. A technical / applied ontology perspective brings structure and tools for vocabulary curation, quality control, lookup, and reuse, as well as application focus on food related biosample collection, plant or animal breeding, robotics, industrial automation, etc. A sociotechnical viewwraps all of this work into a broader interdisciplinary “lingua franca of data science” effort to blend tangential domains of knowledge – from life science, animal and plant rearing, industrial and distribution infrastructure, food traceability, and regulatory management towards public and environmental health and security. Our time of rapid change demands narratives that identify, anticipate and explain courses of action to alleviate hunger, food insecurity, environmental degradation and climate change, narratives that rely on ontologies to salvage learning by enabling precise integration and comparison of past and present food system research and production data.
Timeline
June 1: Submission deadline for full papers and for 2 page presentation abstracts. Submit to: https://easychair.org/conferences2/overview?a=33948395
June 21: author acceptance notification
Sept 5: Final slide presentation submission
TBD (8th or 9th September): IFOW workshop day
For more information please visit: https://foodon.org/ifow-2025-workshop/
Damion Dooley
This is the last call for papers and presentations at the sixth annual full-day Integrated Food Ontology Workshop (IFOW) within the Joint Ontology Workshop (JOWO) programme of the Formal Ontology in Information Systems Conference (FOIS) 2025 at the University of Catania, Italy September 8 -12!
The deadline for IFOW paper or 2 page presentation abstract has been extended from JUNE 1 to JUNE 8th!
Secondly the FOIS / JOWO 2025 registration page is open, with early registration deadline of July 25th
The workshop is anticipated for Sept 8-9 but scheduling has not been finalized yet. As well, we are pretty sure remote presentation will be possible but are confirming this…
The application of ontologies to food systems involves a number of perspectives that altogether promise a more stable, permanent open-source vocabulary which can evolve incrementally to describe food system behaviour as it spans from ecosystem and anthropogenic source, to individual and population-level nutritional and socioeconomic import. Philosophical discussion of food semantics helps to arrive at a consensus model/language of food materials, roles, dispositions, functions, and processes – a middle/upper-level ontology that we can all agree upon. A technical / applied ontology perspective brings structure and tools for vocabulary curation, quality control, lookup, and reuse, as well as application focus on food related biosample collection, plant or animal breeding, robotics, industrial automation, etc. A sociotechnical viewwraps all of this work into a broader interdisciplinary “lingua franca of data science” effort to blend tangential domains of knowledge – from life science, animal and plant rearing, industrial and distribution infrastructure, food traceability, and regulatory management towards public and environmental health and security. Our time of rapid change demands narratives that identify, anticipate and explain courses of action to alleviate hunger, food insecurity, environmental degradation and climate change, narratives that rely on ontologies to salvage learning by enabling precise integration and comparison of past and present food system research and production data.
Timeline
June 1 8th: Submission deadline for full papers and for 2 page presentation abstracts. After logging into EasyChair, submit to: https://easychair.org/conferences/submission_new?a=33948395 . (Alternately, the general FOIS Paper submission link, https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fois2025, should lead to a more general landing page after logging into Easychair. There one would select the “author” link, and then access the “New Submission” link.)
June 21: Author acceptance notification
July 25: Early Registration Fee
Damion Dooley
Apologies if cross-posed to you!
In alignment with a recent general announcement about extending the deadline for JOWO workshop paper and presentation abstract submissions to June 14th, we will have IFOW 2025 (hosted as part of JOWO and FOIS 2025) honour that June 14th deadline submission. (Our previous extension was set to June 8th.)
For more information, please see https://foodon.org/ifow-2025-workshop/ .