The deadline for long and short papers has been extended to **January 10, 2016**

We now invite submissions of posters, and papers describing system demonstrations (up to 2 pages + 1 page for references). Please use submissions guidelines provided in the following Call for Paper.

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Local search engines are specialized information retrieval systems enabling users to discover amenities and services in their neighborhood (schools, businesses, hospitals, etc.). Developing a local search system still raises scientific questions, as well as very specific technical issues. One of the main problems encountered is the partial availability or even the absence of informative content related to local actors, merchants or service providers. As opposed to traditional search engines that benefit from the indexation of full documents, local search engines mostly rely on business descriptions provided by phone companies or trade registers: names, addresses and telephone numbers are the only available data. Far from adequate to build efficient systems, these basic descriptions must be supplemented by other resources. Available open data can be exploited to dramatically improve the design of local search engines and their content.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore new fields of investigation both in terms of algorithmic approaches as well as originality of usable data. The workshop will focus on how open data can be used to enhance the capabilities of local search engines.

Workshop Topics:

Topics will be research related, in the fields of information extraction, knowledge
management, information retrieval, with potential impact to local search systems using open data.

- Topics include, but are not limited to:

Semantic web and open data usage to:
improve local search
enhance ontologies (e.g. terminological and spatial coverage)
support ontology alignment
discover keywords and concepts

Geo content improvement using open data to:
develop geo search algorithms
build geo maps and content
improve geo data
enrich geo data (address management, postal codes, maps)

Information extraction involving Open Data for:
knowledge management
named entity discovery
business discovery
business content discovery

-Format:
We invite submissions of full papers (up to 8 pages) and short papers (up to 4 pages). All submissions will be reviewed using a simple blind process, by at least three program committee members, and will be assessed based on their novelty, potential impact, and clarity of writing.

Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop, and included in the workshop proceedings. At least one author of each paper is expected to register for the workshop and attend to present the paper.

The workshop proceedings will be published through the ACM Digital Library.
Paper submission must be formatted according to the ACM SIG Proceedings Template (LaTeX version: http://www.acm.org/publications/article-templates/SIG%20Proceedings%20Template-May2015%20Zip.zip )

Please, submit your PDF to: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=od4ls

-Important Dates:
Submission: December 29, 2015
Notification: February 2, 2016
Camera Ready: February 8, 2016
Workshop: April 11, 2016

-Organizers:
Eric Charton, Yellow Pages, Montréal, QC, Canada
Nizar Ghoula, Yellow pages, Montréal, QC, Canada
Marie Jean Meurs, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

For further information, please contact Marie-Jean Meurs
(meurs [dot] marie-jean [at] uqam [dot] ca)