The Electronic Colloquium for Spatial and Temporal Reasoning has
recently put its bibliographic reference structure into
operation. Its purpose is to facilitate for
researchers in its area to get an overview of the existing
literature, and to access the specific articles. It is
organized using a database using the following main conceptual
classes:
authors
articles
research topics (e.g. "concurrent actions")
publication fora (e.g. "JAIR", or "ECAI-96")
In addition, there are some auxiliary classes, such as
affiliations (e.g. "DFKI") and conference series (e.g. "ECAI").
The web pages allow the user to browse the literature along the
arcs that are defined by this structure. For example, starting
from the list of
research topics,
one can visit a particular research topic, and for one of the
articles that is listed there, one can proceed to the
author's home page, or to the list of ECSTER-relevant
papers at the conference where the paper was published,
or to the database's list of publications of that
author. As long as one stays within the BRS - the bibliographic
reference structure - one is able to continue navigating
in the same way.
Also, of course, we like to maintain a link to the full text of
the paper itself, as often as such a link can be obtained.
The paper may be physically stored in the
computer system used by its author, or by the conference or
journal where it was presented, or we may have a copy of it in
the host computer of ECSTER - all these three cases occur in
practice.
This bibliographic reference structure allows the user
to browse the current literature, see it in overview, and
read selected articles as she goes along. On the date of
issue of this newsletter, the software is in operation, and the
database contains the relevant publications from a few
conferences and workshops during 1995 and 1996. In other words,
it is not very big yet, but it is intended to grow gradually
over the coming weeks, and even now it is sufficiently extensive
for getting its "look and feel". In order to try it,
one may use the following three entry points:
In the list of researchers,
by clicking the expression [brc] to visit the list of those
of his or her papers which are presently represented in the
structure. At present, papers are only listed under their first author.
If there is no [brc] indication, it means that no paper with
this first author has been entered yet.
Finally, of course, the listings of articles in the present newsletter
are also annotated with links to the author(s), the conference (etc)
of appearance, and the topics that each article addresses, all of which
also provides entries into the BRS.
More about the policy and current state of the BRS can be found in the
policy statement for the
BRS. Your comments and suggestions are welcome, as always.
Forthcoming events
The three continental AI conferences: ECAI, AAAI, and PRICAI are of
course major forthcoming events from the ECSTER point of view.
Since the programs for these conferences are not official yet, we
are not able to include their "STR" subsets in the present newsletter.
However, they will be added to the BRS and its
list of conferences
as soon as possible, and probably well before the next newsletter
comes out. The same applies for the ECSTER-oriented workshops at
those three conferences.
However, there are also other conferences that carry a number of papers
in the area of spatial and temporal reasoning. This time
we have a list of papers on reasoning about actions and
change at FAPR-96:
Recent works
Under this heading we publish quotations of manuscripts and technical
reports which have appeared during the current month and the two previous
months. (Slightly older reports as well as journal and conference
articles go under the next heading below). The list is by no means
proposed to be exhaustive, of course. For the time being, we'll just
include links to all reports that are sent to us, provided that (1) they
are electronically accessible, and (2) they are reasonably relevant
for actions and change.
As the number of contributions increases, they classification into
topics will be introduced here as well.
Make sure you didn't overlook...
This heading will contain references to papers that were published in
1995 and which you may have missed - but which may be quite significant
for your interests.
Editor:Erik Sandewall, Linköping University,
Sweden. Date of issue: 11.2.1996.
Date of last correction:22.03.1996