The online open access publication of the FOIS 2020 proceedings are available on the IOS Press site.

We are pleased to announce that the prize for best paper of FOIS 2020 was awarded to Haythem Ismail and Merna Shafie for their paper ‘A Commonsense Theory of Secrets’.

The 11th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, FOIS 2020, was to happen in Bolzano, Italy, in September 2020 as part of BOSK 2020. Sadly because of the COVID-19 FOIS 2020 was not able to occur as planned. While papers were reviewed and the proceedings will be published by IOS Press, the physical conference has been cancelled.

In recognition of FOIS’ important social function within the applied ontology community, which, for example, a virtual event could not satisfy, it was also decided to run a FOIS edition in September 2021. FOIS 2021 will happen in Bolzano, and it will include all the events originally planned for FOIS 2020 including the Early Career Symposium, the Ontology Show and Tell, as well as the Demo and Industrial Track. And, of course, there will be another call for research papers in early 2021. Authors of papers accepted for FOIS 2020 will also have the option to present their work at FOIS 2021.

FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA), which is a non-profit organization aiming to promote interdisciplinary research and international collaboration in formal ontology.