The Semantic Web : 3rd Asian Semantic Web Conference

This volume contains the main proceedings of the 3rd Annual Asian Semantic WebConference(ASWC2008)heldinBangkok, Thailand, duringDecember8-11, 2008. Assuch, ASWC2008showcasedthelatestresultsintheresearchandapp- cationofSemantic Web technologies-applyingsemantics ata planetaryscale. OverthelastfewyearswehavebeenwitnessingatrendinwhichtheSemantic Web has been transforming from a niche research area to the mainstream in academia and industry. The European Semantic Web Conference, held earlier this year in Tenerife, saw a growth in the participation and engagement from semantic start-up companies. This conference, showcasing an Asian perspective andnowhaving establisheditself, is alsoa signthatthe Semantic Web is moving to the mainstream. In addition to the emergence in the mainstream, the Semantic Web cont- ues to generate a signi?cant volume of scienti?cally interesting research articles. Research submissions to ASWC 2008 were scrutinized and ?ltered via a thr- phasereviewing process. First, eachsubmissionwasevaluatedby threemembers from the Program Committee. Second, papers and the associated reviews were meta-reviewed by members of the Senior Program Committee. In this second phase the meta-reviewers led discussions between reviewers and produced an acceptance recommendation. In the last phase, on the basis of the reviews and associated meta-review recommendations, the ?nal selections were made jointly by the Programme Chairs. Although this process required substantial e?orts from the members of the Program Committee, it ensured that only papers of the highest quality were accepted. The ?nal acceptance of 37 papers for pub- cation and presentation at the conference out of the 118 submissions resulted in an acceptance rate of 31%. Of the papers we accepted these are split between Asia (18) and Europe (17), with an additional 2 from the USA.