Ebook: Web Mining: From Web to Semantic Web: First European Web Mining Forum, EWMF 2003, Cavtat-Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 22, 2003, Invited and Selected Revised Papers

In the last years, research on Web mining has reached maturity and has broadened in scope. Two different but interrelated research threads have emerged, based on the dual nature of the Web: – The Web is a practically in?nite collection of documents: The acquisition and - ploitation of information from these documents asks for intelligent techniques for information categorization, extraction and search, as well as for adaptivity to the interests and background of the organization or person that looks for information. – The Web is a venue for doing business electronically: It is a venue for interaction, information acquisition and service exploitation used by public authorities, n- governmental organizations, communities of interest and private persons. When observed as a venue for the achievement of business goals, a Web presence should be aligned to the objectives of its owner and the requirements of its users. This raises the demand for understandingWeb usage, combining it with other sources of knowledge inside an organization, and deriving lines of action. ThebirthoftheSemanticWebatthebeginningofthedecadeledtoacoercionofthetwo threadsintwoaspects:(i)theextractionofsemanticsfromtheWebtobuildtheSemantic Web;and(ii)theexploitationofthesesemanticstobettersupportinformationacquisition and to enhance the interaction for business and non-business purposes. Semantic Web mining encompasses both aspects from the viewpoint of knowledge discovery.

This book originates from the first European Web Mining Forum, EWMF 2003, held in Cavtat-Dubrovnik, Croatia in September 2003 in association with ECML/PKDD 2003.

The Web Mining Forum initiative is motivated by the insight that knowledge discovery on the Web from the viewpoint of the hyperactive analysis and from the viewpoint of interaction among persons and institutions are complementary, both for the conventional Web and for the Semantic Web.

This book presents an introductory roadmap paper, 4 invited papers and 6 workshop papers which were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. Among the topics addressed are Web usage mining, Web mining for the addition of semantics, semantically enhanced Web filtering, ontologies, wrapper induction, Web personalization, user profiling, user session evaluation, and evolution of Web usage patterns.