The Semantic Web - ISWC 2004 : Springer : 9783540237983 : 3540237984 : 28 Oct 2004 : The 3rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2004) was held Nov- ber 7?11, 2004 in Hiroshima, Japan. If it is true what the proverb says: ?Once by accident, twice by habit, three times by tradition,? then this third ISWC did indeed ?rmly establish a tradition. After the overwhelming interest in last year's conference at Sanibel Island, Florida, this year's conference showed that the Semantic Web is not just a one-day wonder, but has established itself ?rmly on the research agenda. At a time when special interest meetings with a Sem- tic Web theme are springing up at major conferences in numerous areas (ACL, VLDB, ECAI, AAAI, ECML, WWW, to name but a few), the ISWC series has established itself as the primary venue for Semantic Web research. Response to the call for papers for the conference continued to be strong. We solicited submissions to three tracks of the conference: the research track, th