CALL FOR PAPERS
We invite contributions to the research track of The Web Conference 2021 (formerly known as WWW). The conference will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 19 to April 23, 2021.

Instructions for Authors of Research Track submissions

The Web Conference is the premier conference focused on understanding the current state and the evolution of the Web through the lens of computer science, computational social science, economics, policy, and many other disciplines. We encourage submissions that describe in-depth studies to improve our understanding of the Web and its impact, introduce technical and socio-technical advances that enhance and expand Web platforms and technologies, and make strides in democratizing access to Web information and knowledge. The specific topics of interest are highlighted in the following 12 research tracks.

Crowdsourcing and Human Computation
Economics and Monetization
Search
Security, Privacy, and Trust
Semantics and Knowledge
Social Network Analysis and Graph Algorithms
Systems and Infrastructure
User experience and Accessibility
User Modeling and Personalization
Web and Society
Web Mining and Content Analysis
Web of Things, Ubiquitous, and Mobile Computing
Submission Guidelines

For the research tracks, the recommended paper length is 8 pages plus references; the total page count must not exceed 12 pages. Papers exceeding the 12-page limit may be rejected without review. Submit papers through easychair.org/conferences/?conf=thewebconf2021

Formatting

Submissions must adhere to the ACM template and format. For Latex submissions, use Master Article Template – LaTeX, and choose the “sigconf” option. (Read more about LaTeX documentation and ACM LaTeX best practices.) For Microsoft Word submissions, use the Interim Layout document. (Read more about interim sample pdf.) Submissions for review must be in PDF format. Submissions must be self-contained and in English. Submissions that do not follow these guidelines, or do not view or print properly, may be rejected without review. Authors are responsible for ensuring that submissions adhere strictly to the required format.

Author Identity

The review process will be double-blind. The submitted document should not include author information and should not include acknowledgements, citations or discussion of related work that would make the authorship apparent. Submissions containing author identifying information are subject to rejection without review. You can enable the double-blind mode in the new ACM format by adding the “anonymous” option (e.g., \documentclass[sigconf, anonymous, review]{acmart}). Note however, that it is acceptable to explicitly refer in the paper to the companies or organizations that provided datasets, hosted experiments or deployed solutions. In other words, instead of stating for instance that an experiment “was conducted on the logs of a major search engine,” the authors should refer to the search engine by name. The reviewers will be informed that doing so does not necessarily imply that the authors are currently affiliated with the mentioned organization. The online copy of a paper (e.g., on arXiv) will not break the double-blind process.

Originality and Concurrent Submissions

Submissions must present original work. Concurrent submissions are not allowed. Papers that have been published in or accepted to any peer-reviewed journal or conference/workshop with published proceedings may not be submitted. Papers that are currently under review, or will be submitted to other meetings or publications may not be submitted. However, submissions that are available online and/or have been previously presented orally or as posters in venues with no formal proceedings, are allowed. Additionally, the ACM has a strict policy against plagiarism, misrepresentation, and falsification that applies to all publications. All prior work must be appropriately cited.

Ethical Use of Data and Informed Consent

Papers that (1) describe experiments with users and/or deployed systems (e.g., websites or apps), or that (2) rely on sensitive user data (e.g., social network information), must follow basic precepts of ethical research and subscribe to community norms. These include: respect for privacy, secure storage of sensitive data, voluntary and informed consent if users are placed at risk, avoiding deceptive practices when not essential, beneficence (maximizing the benefits to an individual or to society while minimizing harm to the individual), risk mitigation, and post-hoc disclosure of audits. When appropriate, authors are encouraged to include a subsection describing these issues. Authors may want to consult the Menlo Report for further information on ethical principles, the Allman/Paxson IMC ‘07 paper for guidance on ethical data sharing, and the Sandvig et al. ‘14 paper on the ethics of algorithm audits.

Note that submitting research for approval by each author’s institutional ethics review body (IRB) may be necessary in some cases, but by itself may not be sufficient. In cases where the program committee has concerns about the ethics of the work in a submission, the program committee will consider the ethical soundness and justification of the submission, just as it does its technical soundness. The program committee takes a broad view of what constitutes an ethical concern, and authors agree to be available at any time during the review process to rapidly respond to queries from the program committee chairs regarding ethical considerations. Authors unsure about topical fit or ethical issues are welcome to contact the program committee chairs.

Conflict of Interest Policy

There is no author declaration of conflict of interest (COI). Reviewers will be asked to declare a COI when one or more of the following associations exist:

Employment at the same institution or company
Candidate for employment at the same institution or company
Received an honorarium or stipend from the institution or company within the past 12 months
Co-author on book or paper in the last 24 months
Co-principal investigator on grant or research project in the last 24 months
Actively working on one or more projects together
Family relationship
Close personal relationship
Graduate advisee/advisor relationship
Deep personal animosity
Review Process

Each paper is submitted to one of the 12 tracks. Program committee (PC) members will self-declare their expertise for each paper (passing knowledge, knowledgeable, expert). Each submission will receive at least three independent reviews in the track. The goal of the review step is to provide constructive evaluation of a submitted paper. Each submission will also receive a composite score in addition to a comprehensive review. The submission will be discussed between the PC members who reviewed the paper and the track chairs, and submissions in each track will be ranked based on factors including technical merits, originality of work, potential impact of results, quality of execution, quality of presentation, adequacy of citations, and reproducibility, and recommended for presentation at the conference and awards. Recommendations from all tracks will be further discussed with additional assessment at an meeting involving track and program chairs.

Rebuttal

In order to make the final decisions more informed, the Web Conference 2021 will allow for author rebuttals. Authors will have the chance to provide their rebuttals in response to the reviews, mainly making clarifications and answering key questions raised by the reviewers. No additional technical contents or experimental results will be considered during the rebuttal phase. The final decision will be made not only based on technical merits but also the rebuttal from the authors where applicable.

Publication Policy

The proceedings of The Web Conference are published online through the conference website without a fee, as well as the ACM Digital Library. Upon the acceptance of a paper, no author change is allowed. For each accepted paper, at least one of the authors needs to register for the conference and present the paper. This is mandatory for including the paper in the proceedings.

Copyright, Permission and Publication License

The International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) shall hold copyright in the proceedings and in the individual articles published in the proceedings and shall grant the public permission to use the licensed material contained in the individual articles of the proceedings under the terms and conditions defined in the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international license (CC-BY 4.0).

The proceedings will be published in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library. IW3C2 will publish, on its Web site, persistent links to the Open Access versions of the articles of the proceedings hosted in the ACM Digital Library. ACM formatted DOIs will be registered via CrossRef by the ACM. Authors are required to sign the release of their copyright to IW3C2 via an IW3C2 form. We remind you that this agreement is signed with IW3C2 and not with the ACM. The ACM will be responsible for collecting the signed copyright transfer agreements on behalf of the IW3C2 via the ACM online eRights System. The corresponding author(s) should expect to receive an email from rightsreview.acm.org some time after the camera ready submission deadline.

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline: October 12, 2020
Full paper submission deadline: October 19, 2020
Rebuttal phase: November 25 — December 2, 2020
Acceptance notifications: January 15, 2021
Source files and Camera-ready PDFs due: TBA
All submission deadlines are end-of-day in the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone.

Programs Committee Chairs

Leila Zia, Wikimedia Foundation
Jie Tang, Tsinghua University
Marc Najork, Google
contact: pcchairs2021@thewebconf.org

The Web Conference 2021 © Pitea d.o.o.
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