Since its start ten years ago, the International Conference in Formal Ontology on Information Systems (FOIS) has explored the multiple perspectives on the notion of ontology that have arisen from such diverse research communities as philosophy, logic, computer science, cognitive science, linguistics, and various scientific domains. As ontologies have been applied in new and exciting domains such as the World Wide Web, bioinformatics and geographical information systems, it has become evident that there is a need for ontologies that have been developed with solid theoretical foundations based on philosophical, linguistic and logical analysis. Similarly, there is also a need for theoretical research that is driven by the issues that have been raised by recent work in the more applied domains. FOIS is intended to be a forum in which to explore this interplay between the theoretical insights of formal ontology and their application to information systems and emerging semantic technologies. Themes emerging from this volume give a snapshot of current issues within the fields of formal ontology and ontological engineering, as well as providing a glimpse of future research directions.
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