Despite its potential, incorporating ontologies into database conceptual modelling poses challenges related to semantic heterogeneity, the complexity of ontology engineering, and methodological rigour. This call for papers invites contributions that advance theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects of ontology-driven conceptual modelling for databases, with the aim of fostering more interoperable, intelligent, and semantically grounded data infrastructures.

Ontology-driven conceptual modelling addresses limitations of traditional database models, such as the relational and Entity–Relationship paradigms, by introducing shared vocabularies and formally defined concepts aligned with domain knowledge. This alignment is particularly relevant in domains where semantic accuracy is critical, such as healthcare, finance, and intelligent, data-driven systems. At the same time, it reflects a methodological shift from schema-centric to knowledge-centric data management, supporting advanced capabilities such as semantic querying, reasoning, and integration with knowledge graphs.

Although it has potential, incorporating ontologies into database conceptual modelling poses challenges related to semantic heterogeneity, the complexity of ontology engineering, and methodological rigour. This call for papers invites contributions that advance theoretical, methodological, and practical aspects of ontology-driven conceptual modelling for databases, with the aim of fostering more interoperable, intelligent, and semantically grounded data infrastructures.

The FOIS conference is a meeting point for all researchers with an interest in formal ontology. Formal ontology is the systematic study of the types of entities and relations making up the domains of interest represented in modern information systems. The conference encourages the submission of high-quality, previously unpublished results on both theoretical issues and practical advancements. FOIS 2026 will have distinct tracks for foundational issues, ontology applications and methods, and domain ontologies.

FOIS aims to be a nexus of interdisciplinary research and communication for researchers from various domains who engage with formal ontology. Common application areas include conceptual modeling, database design, knowledge engineering and management, software engineering, organizational modeling, artificial intelligence, robotics, computational linguistics, the life sciences, bioinformatics and scientific research in general, geographic information science, information retrieval, library and information science, as well as the Semantic Web.

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