************************************************************************** NEWSLETTER ON DECISION AND REASONING UNDER UNCERTAINTY Issue 98001 Editors: Salem Benferhat, Henri Prade 21.7.1998 Back issues available at http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/dru/binf.html ************************************************************************** Dear Colleagues, We are very pleased to announce the creation of a new area of the Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI), named Decision and Reasoning under Uncertainty (DRU), area of which we are in charge. To see how ETAI operates and what its present state is, the best is to take a look at the ETAI webpage http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/. A brief summary is also given below. This new area covers researches on reasoning and decision under uncertainty both on the methodological and on the applicative sides. Significant papers are invited from the whole spectrum of uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence researches. See below for the call for papers. The reviewing process in ETAI-DRU area differs from the traditional one. Each sumbitted paper goes through the following steps (see below for a complete description of the reviewing process): 1. The paper is posted at the ETAI-website and is announced to DRU-community via a newsletter. This starts a three months online (public) discussions. 2. After these three months discussions, the author decides whether he/she wishes to have the paper refereed for the ETAI, or not. 3. If yes, the article is sent to confidential referees (timing is short, typically 3 weeks). The article is either accepted or not accepted for the ETAI. Research papers which are under public discussions are located at : "http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/received/dru/received.html". Thus, we have already received a first paper from David Poole entitled "Decision Theory, the Situation Calculus and Conditional Plans". To contribute to the discussion or debate section concerning submitted papers, please send your questions or comments as an email to the area editors (benferhat@irit.fr, prade@irit.fr). Besides the reviewing process, we also organizes News Journals and Newsletters. The Newsletter is sent out by e-mail regularly and is the media through which information is distributed rapidly. The News Journal is published 3 or 4 times per year as a digest of the information that was sent out in the past Newsletters. Newsletters will i) inform about new submitted papers (open to discussions), ii) announce Conferences, Books, Journal issues, PhD thesis and technical reports, Career Opportunities and Training, and softwares dealing with uncertainty, and iii) include discussions on uncertainty reasoning. To include some announcements in one of the previous categories, please send an email to benferhat@irit.fr and Prade@irit.fr. Lastly, in order to maintain a list of people working on Decision and reasoning under uncertainty, and in order to continue receiving Newsletters and News Journals, please send the following information by email: Last and first name, affiliation, email address, personal web-page. Please, feel free to ask any questions about ETAI-DRU area. We hope that you may consider the possibility of contributing papers and discussions to the ETAI-DRU areas in the future. Best regards Salem Benferhat and Henri Prade ________________________________________________ 1. Call for paper Significant papers are invited from the whole spectrum of uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence researches. Topics of interests include, but are not restricted to: Methods: Probability theory (Bayesian or not), Belief function theory, Upper and lower probabilities, Possibility theory, Fuzzy sets, Rough sets, Measures of information, ... Problems: Approximate reasoning, Decision-making under uncertainty, Planning under uncertainty, Uncertainty issues in learning and data mining, Algorithms for uncertain reasoning, Formal languages for representing uncertain information, Belief revision and plausible reasoning under uncertainty, Data fusion, Diagnosis, Inference under uncertainty, expert systems, Cognitive modelling and uncertainty, Practical applications, ... Area editors: Salem Benferhat, Henri Prade, IRIT, Toulouse, France Area editorial committee * Fahiem Bacchus, Univ. of Waterloo, Canada * Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier, LIP6, Univ. of Paris VI, France * Ronen I. Brafman, Stanford, USA * Roger Cooke, Tech. Univ. Delft, The Netherlands * Didier Dubois, IRIT, Toulouse, France * Francesc Esteva, IIIA-CSIC, Bellaterra, Spain * Finn V. Jensen, Aalborg Univ., Denmark * Jurg Kohlas, Univ. of Fribourg, Switzerland * Rudolf Kruse, Univ. of Magdeburg, Germany * Serafin Moral, Univ. of Granada, Spain * Prakash P. Shenoy, Univ. of Kansas, USA * Philippe Smets, IRIDIA, Free Univ. of Brussels, Belgium * Marek J. Druzdzel, Univ. of Pittsburgh, USA * Lech Polkowski, Warsaw Univ. of Technology, Poland 2. A brief summary of ETAI The following gives some information about ETAI (to get a complete information, take a look to the web page: http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/). In a certain sense, ETAI is an electronic journal. However, it is not simply a traditional journal gone electronic. The differences may be summarized by the following table describing the functions performed by a conventional journal and by the ETAI: Conventional Journal ETAI Distribution of the article A major function Not our business Reviewing and quality assurance A major function A major function Debate about Difficult and not much A major function published results done Publication of Impossible Welcomed and already on-line software started Bibliographic Difficult and not much A major function services done The basic service of a conventional (paper) journal is to have the article typeset, printed, and sent to the subscribers. The ETAI stays completely away from that process: it assumes the existence of First Publication Archives (similar to "Preprint Archives", but with a guarantee that the articles remain unchanged for an extended period of time). The ETAI only deals with URL:s pointing to articles that have been published (but without international peer review) in First Publication Archives. The reviewing and quality control is a major topic for the ETAI, like for conventional journals. However, the ETAI pioneers the principle of posteriori reviewing: the reviewing and acceptance process takes place after the article has been published. This has a number of consequences, but the major advantage from the point of view of the author is that he or she retains the priority right of the article and its results per the original date of publication, and independently of reviewing delays and possible reviewing mistakes. Reviewing in ETAI also differs from conventional journal reviewing in that it uses a succession of several "filters", rather than one single reviewing pass, and in that it is set up so as to encourage self-control on the side of the authors. The intention is that ETAI's quality control shall be considerably more strict and reliable than what is done in conventional journals. Besides the reviewing process, the ETAI also organizes News Journals (or newsletters) in each of its speciality areas. News Journals are fora for information about current events (workshops, etc), but they will also contain debate about recently published research results. Naturally, the on-line medium is much more appropriate for debate than what a conventional journal is. Compared to mailgroups, the News Journals offer a more persistent and reputable forum of discussion. Discussion contributions are preserved in such a way that they are accessible and referencable for the future. In other words, they also are to be considered as "published". One additional type of contributions in News Journals is for links to software that is available and can be run over the net. This is particularly valuable for software which can be run directly from a web page. Already the first issue of an ETAI News Journal publishes two such on-line software contributions. The creation of bibliographies, finally, is a traditional activity in research, but it is impractical in paper-based media since by their very nature, bibliographies ought to be updated as new articles arrive. The on-line maintenance of specialized bibliographies within each of its topic areas is a natural function in the ETAI. Generally speaking, it is clear that the electronic medium lends itself to a different grouping of functionalities than what is natural or even possible in the paper-based technology. For example, the bibliographic database underlying ETAI's bibliographic services is well integrated with the reviewing process and with the News Journals where new contributions to the literature are first reported. Similarly, debate items pertaining to a particular article will be accessible from the entry for the article itself. The ETAI therefore represents a novel approach to electronic publishing. We do not simply inherit the patterns from the older technology, but instead we have rethought the structure of scientific communication in order to make the best possible use of international computer networks as well as electronic document and database technologies. 3. The ETAI Reviewing process The reviewing process is the core activity of a scientific journal, electronic or not. The ETAI wishes to make full use of the electronic medium in order to obtain higher quality reviewing as a service to authors and readers alike. The reviewing will therefore be organized in the following, novel way. From the point of view of the author and the individual article, this works as follows: . The author(s) write(s) the article, and prepares it in postscript and/or PDF format. It is recommended to use ETAI style files. . An informal contact with the area editor may be appropriate in order to check that the article follows the basic formal criteria. . The author arranges to have the article published in a first publication archive (university E-Press, preprint archive, etc) in such a way that it is identified now and forever with a specific URL. . The article represented by the URL is submitted to the relevant ETAI area for inclusion in a news journal. . The area editor screens it and approves (hopefully) the inclusion of the article. . The article is subjected to open reviewing during at least six months. The author is likely to make changes to the article based on the feedback. . The author decides where he wants to go for acceptance. If she chooses e.g. JAIR or some other place except ETAI, nothing more to do. If the author submits the article (now probably modified) to for acceptance by the ETAI, then the area editor appoints two referees and gives them a short amount of time to do their job. Then the area editor decides based on the statements of the referees. See above regarding time of submission and time of decision. . Even after ETAI acceptance, the article "hangs around" and may engage additional debate. ************************************************************************** This Newsletter is issued whenever there is new news, and is sent by auto- matic E-mail and without charge to a list of subscribers. To obtain or to change a subscription, please send mail to the editors, benferha@irit.fr or prade@irit.fr. Contributions are welcomed to the same address. **************************************************************************