As it becomes more evident day by day, the COVID-19 pandemic is shaking up the conference calendars all over Europe. We expect the current situation and the corresponding restrictions on travel and social life to stay in place for a couple of months, obviously affecting our conference planned for September this year. Even if this crisis will be resolved by summer, most of the SEMANTiCS community might still be busy in autumn, dealing with the cancellations the pandemic caused in 2020.
As full virtualization of the conference is beyond our organizational and financial capabilities, the SEMANTiCS organizing committee decided to cancel the Poster & Demo Track, the Workshop & Tutorial Track as well as the Industry Track but keeps the Scientific Tracks open (including the special tracks).
This is to ensure a minimum level of continuity for the scientific community. All submissions will undergo high-quality reviews and accepted papers will be published open-access, in case a sufficient amount of high-quality papers gets accepted. Besides the proceedings, authors of accepted papers will be asked to submit presentation videos (5-10 minutes) which will be collected on a web page together with a recorded welcome and introduction statements from the chairs. This shall replace the obligatory paper presentation and will contribute to a good documentation of the authors’ work.
Finally, SEMANTiCS will come back strong in 2021. We look forward to seeing you face-to-face on September 6-9, 2021 in Amsterdam.
