Data Exploration in the Web 3.0 Age (DEW 2017)

Over the course of the last twenty years, currently emerging Web 3.0 environments have provided a strong potential for the integration of data sources, applications and tools. In such a pervasive and highly dynamic scenario, existing techniques for accessing and managing web content seem to be actually inadequate to satisfy the user needs and more implicit or automatic ways of joining information are needed to improve the usability of web resources where searching is often unwieldy. This raises several important challenges for future data and web mining methods. Such challenges range from the analysis of poorly structured information, such as annotations and tags, to the provision of innovative methods that support users in searching and integrating information offered by web resources.

The overall goal of these challenges is not limited to enhance information retrieval, but aims to raise awareness of how such information can be put to use in order to transform a specific dataset into a particularly significant resource when used in conjunction with other sources of information. According to this point of view, web-based information is also seen as an important source of economic growth enabling new forms of entrepreneurships and social innovation. Indeed, having a social and economic value, web information can be used as a basis for the creation of new services which add value to the original data. Finally, the growth of information through the Internet dramatically increases the range of benefits and usages derived from enabling data mining technologies that clearly point toward a high user involvement. The above motivations make DEW 2017 a special venue for a series of topics at the intersection of several technologies such as data mining, web intelligence, search, cloud technologies, etc.