==================== Call for Papers ======================

    Cooperative Systems in Heterogeneous Environments
                        (COSYS)

      http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rza/cosys/cosys12/

Technical Track of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
                      (SAC 2012)
     http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2012/

           Trento, Italy, March 25-29, 2012

 The proceedings of the symposium will be published by ACM

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Scope
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The deployment of many applications in distributed systems is often 
underpinned by cooperative schemes. These are required to address the 
pressing need to harness and marshal resources across dynamic and 
heterogeneous environments. Cooperative systems create spaces where 
entities can interact with each other and their environments, and 
provide services in order to help achieve specific goals. They are 
characterised by their level of distribution, the underlying mode of 
interaction and the degree of autonomy of the entities. Client-server 
architectures, P2P systems, GRID systems and multi-agent systems (MAS) 
identify different models of cooperative behaviour.

Within the scope of cooperation, architectural frameworks in e-commerce, 
e-government, e-learning and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) 
have been successfully introduced to generate synergy between humans and 
systems. While hypermedia and personalisation systems represent specific 
instances of direct adaptation, software agents have ushered in proxy 
interventions on behalf of users. It is in pervasive environments that 
cooperation between different entities is finding its full expression; 
symbiotic relationships are being embedded and seamless transitions 
initiated and sustained.

Effective cooperation demands that autonomous entities and systems 
overcome their environmental heterogeneity and resolve their syntactic 
and semantic differences. By adhering to common abstractions and models 
the participating entities are insulated from the complexity of the 
environments of their protagonists. This facilitates the unfolding of 
processes such as data and system integration, coordination of 
behaviour, resource access and sharing, and participation in complex 
activities.

In managing the differences between entities, systems and environments a 
range of methods and techniques were introduced in order to support 
interoperation and facilitate semantic interoperability. Resource and 
process management, configuration, adaptation and negotiation define a 
wide spectrum of cooperation, from reactive behaviour to proactive 
intervention. These tasks are being enhanced by ontologies, context 
awareness and adaptivity.

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Topics of interest
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The track seeks original contributions on  cooperative behaviour
and cooperative systems related but not limited to the following topics:

- Resource management and brokering in cooperative systems
- Data and process mediation in cooperative systems
- Personalisation and recommendation systems
- Implicit and explicit profile generation in cooperative schemes
- Modes of interaction in cooperative systems
- Role of mediation in cooperative systems
- Ontologies and ontology mapping in cooperative systems
- Arbitration and negotiation in cooperation
- Hypermedia systems in cooperation
- Context-awareness in cooperative systems
- Self-configuration and adaptivity in cooperative systems
- Autonomous and emergent behaviour in cooperative systems
- Service management in cooperative systems
- Heterogeneity management in cooperative systems
- Aggregation of cooperative services
- Security, trust and reputation in cooperative systems
- Patterns of cooperative behaviour
- Formal aspects of cooperation
- Information management models in cooperative systems
- Policy management in cooperative systems
- Protocol management in cooperative systems
- Models and model transformation in cooperative systems
- Domain specific languages (DSL) in cooperative systems
- Load sharing in cooperative systems
- Cooperation in ubiquitous and pervasive environments.
- Cooperation in social and P2P community systems
- Cooperation in foundational systems
- Mobile contexts for cooperation
- Architectural frameworks for cooperation
- Cooperative systems in e-science, e-commerce, e-government and e-learning
- Case studies and experiences of cooperative systems

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Important Dates
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- Submission deadline: August 31, 2011
- Author notification: October 12, 2011
- Camera-ready copies: November 2, 2011
- Symposium/Track dates: March 25-29, 2012

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Program Committee
-----------------

Richard Anthony, University of Greenwich, UK
Irfan Awan, University of Bradford, UK
Luciano Baresi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Sandford Bessler, Telecommunications Research Center, Austria
Mehul Bhatt, University of Bremen, Germany
Nick Blundell, University of Birmingham, UK
Behzad Bordbar, University of Birmingham, UK
Jen-Yao Chung, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, USA
Larbi Esmahi, Athabasca University, Canada
Irene Garrigos, Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Christian Glasner, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Germany
Nathan Griffiths, Warwick University, UK
Robert J. Hendley, University of Birmingham, UK
Mohan S. Kankanhalli, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Rania Khalaf, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, USA
Massimo Mecella, University of Rome, Italy
Gianluca Moro, University of Bologna, Italy
Minoru Nakayama, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Gethin Norman, University of Glasgow, UK
Alex Norta, University of Helsinki, Finland
Hongyang  Qu, Oxford University, UK
Omer Rana, Cardiff University, UK
Stefan Reiff-Marganiec, University of Leicester, UK
Jose Raul Romero, University of Cordoba, Spain
Weiming Shen, National Research Council of Canada
Timothy K. Shih, Asia University, Taiwan
Georgios Theodoropoulos, University of Birmingham, UK
Torab Torabi, La Trobe University, Australia
Hong-Linh Truong, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Hamdi Yahyaoui, Kuwait University, Kuwait
Muhammad Younas, Oxford Brookes University, UK
Murat Yuksel, University of Nevada, USA

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Track Co-Chairs
---------------

For any inquiries please contact the track organisers:

Rachid Anane
Faculty of Engineering and Computing
Coventry University, UK
r[dot]anane[at]coventry[dot]ac[dot]uk

David Parker
Department of Computer Science
University of Oxford, UK
david[dot]parker[at]cs[dot]ox[dot]ac[dot]uk

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