These are the proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA 2004), held at the Fair and Congress Center in - furt, Germany, September 2729, 2004. It was part of the multi-conference Net. ObjectDays 2004, and, in particular, was co-located with the 2nd German Conference on Multiagent Systems Technologies (MATES 2004). In today's networked world of linked heterogeneous, pervasive computer systems, devices, and information landscapes, the intelligent coordination and provision of relevant added-value information at any time, anywhere, by means of cooperative information agents becomes increasingly important for a variety of applications. An information agent is a computational software entity that has access to one or multiple, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed data and information sources. It proactively searches for and maintains information on behalf of its human users, or other agents, preferably just in time. In other words,itismanagingandovercomingthedi?cultiesassociatedwithinformation overload in open, pervasive information and service landscapes. Cooperative - formation agents may collaborate with each other to accomplish both individual and shared joint goals depending on the actual preferences of their users, b- getary constraints, and resources available. One major challenge of developing agent-based intelligent information systems in open environments is to balance the autonomy of networked data, information, and knowledge sources with the potential payo? of leveraging them using information agents. Interdisciplinaryresearchanddevelopmentofinformationagentsrequires- pertise in relevant domains of information retrieval, arti?cial intelligence, database systems, human-computer interaction, and Internetand Web techn- ogy.

Autorentext
Vipul Kashyap, PhD is a Senior Medical Informatician in the Clinical Informatics Research&Development group at Partners HealthCare System. He plays the role of a systems and information architect in the content of a platform for Clinical Knowledge Management Platform and creating of clinical information models in the context of the Enterprise Clinical Services architecture at Partners Healthcare System. Vipul has received his PhD from the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick that investigated the use of metadata and ontologies for information and knowledge management. He was a co-project manager of a Knowledge Management effort at Telcordia Technologies (formerly known as Bellcore) focused on knowledge sharing and reuse across Telcordia's Professional Services Units. He was a fellow at the National Library of Medicine, and has held positions at Micro-electronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Vipul has published 2 books on the topic of Semantics in Information Brokering and Integration, 40-50 articles in prestigious conferences andjournals. He serves on the editorial boards of 3 journals and sits on the technical advisory board of an early stage companies developing semantics-based products. He also represents Partners on the W3C Advisory Committee and the EHR Technical Committee of the HealthCare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP).

Inhalt
Invited Contributions.- Multi-agent Systems and Distributed Data Mining.- Society-Centered Design for Socially Embedded Multiagent Systems.- Agents and OWL-S.- Information Agents and P2P Computing.- Design and Implementation of Agent Community Based Peer-to-Peer Information Retrieval Method.- Towards Monitoring of Group Interactions and Social Roles via Overhearing.- A Probabilistic Approach to Predict Peers' Performance in P2P Networks.- Personalizing Information Retrieval with Multi-agent Systems.- Issues of Communication.- On the Impact of Agent Communication Languages on the Implementation of Agent Systems.- Reasoning About Communication A Practical Approach Based on Empirical Semantics.- The Evolution of Probabilistic Reciprocity in a Multi-agent Environment with Neighborhoods.- Recommender Agents.- Collaboration Analysis in Recommender Systems Using Social Networks.- Qualitative Analysis of User-Based and Item-Based Prediction Algorithms for Recommendation Agents.- Information Agents and Mobile Computing.- Agents that Coordinate Devices, Services, and Humans in Ubiquitous Computing.- Multi-agent Technology as an enabler of Computer Supported Cooperative Work for the Mobile Workforce.- A-Globe: Agent Platform with Inaccessibility and Mobility Support.- Industrial Applications.- Supply Chain Management using Multi-agent System.- An Agent Simulation Model for the Québec Forest Supply Chain.- Performance Analysis Of Multiagent Industrial System.- Cooperation in Open Environments.- The RoleX Environment for Multi-agent Cooperation.- Auction Equilibrium Strategies for Task Allocation in Uncertain Environments.- Agent's Multiple Inquiries for Enhancing the Partnership Formation Process.