We invite contributions to the research tracks of The Web Conference 2023 (formerly known as WWW). The conference will have a hybrid format, hosted by Austin, TX, US, on April 30 - May 4, 2023.
Instructions for authors of research tracks submissionsThe Web Conference is the premier conference focused on exploring the current state and the evolution of the Web through the lens of different scientific disciplines, including computing science, social science, economics and political sciences.
The scope of the conference is the Web and how it has crucially enabled new research and applications. While the Web feeds on and is part of a broader interdisciplinary ecosystem, including technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and many others, it remains a distinct scholarly field, with its own research methods, tools, and challenges. As such, submissions that merely use one or another Web artifact — e.g., a dataset or a Web Application Programmer Interface (API) or a social network — rather than answering a specific Web-related scientific research challenge, are out of scope of the conference and will be rejected early during the reviewing process (“desk-rejected”).
In this regard, we encourage submissions that:
Our research interests are organized in thematic research tracks, each with a dedicated text for what is expected in the track in terms of relevant topics and content. In 2023, these will be (in alphabetical order):
If your paper is based on results obtained in an industrial environment, has clear industry relevance, addresses challenges motivated by practical settings, and has been deployed or released, you may want to check the Industry Track. The conference will also feature a Web4Good track and a History of the Web track. Please examine these calls closely when deciding to which track to submit your work, and ask track chairs in case of doubt.
For the research tracks, submissions are limited to 8 content pages, which should include all figures and tables referenced within those 8 pages. In addition, you can include up to 2 pages of appendices, plus additional pages for references, until completing a maximum of 12 pages. The total count of pages of your submission must not exceed 12 pages. Supplementary materials (e.g., full proofs), which reviewers are not required to review and that will not be archived in ACM’s Digital Library if the paper is accepted, can be provided in the submitted manuscript as a link to a PDF of unlimited pages. This link should point to an anonymized PDF file at an anonymous file server (e.g., https://anonymous.4open.science/ or other service of your choice). The service should host this file throughout the entire reviewing period: do not use temporary file hosting services providing less than 90 days of hosting.
Papers must be formatted according to the instructions below, and those not complying to the page limits or not following the formatting guidelines will be desk-rejected. Authors will also be asked to confirm their length compliance during paper submission.
Submissions will be handled via EasyChair, at
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=thewebconf2023Please carefully verify that when submitting your paper, your paper is related to web technologies, platforms, or ecosystems, and select the right track for your paper, making sure the connection to a topic or topics within that track is evident on the first page of your paper. This is important because your paper will be assessed early on regarding its relevance to the conference and its relevance to the track-specific CFP of the track that you submitted to, and will be rejected with minimal feedback (“desk rejected”) if it does not fit that track.
Submissions must adhere to the ACM template and format . Please remember to add Concepts and Keywords. Please use the template in traditional double-column format to prepare your submissions. For example, word users may use Word Interim Template, and LaTeX users may use the “sample-sigconf” template. Overleaf users may want to use the ACM proceedings template available in Overleaf.
Submissions for review must be in PDF format. They must be self-contained and written in English. Submissions that do not follow these guidelines, or do not view or print properly, will be rejected without review.
The review process will be double-blind. The submitted document should omit any author names, affiliations, or other identifying information. This may include, but is not restricted to acknowledgements, self-citations, references to prior work by the author(s), and so on. Submissions not complying to this guidance will be desk-rejected; authors will also be asked to confirm their anonymization compliance during paper submission. Reviewers will be instructed not to attempt to find out who the authors are.
You may explicitly refer in the paper to organizations that provided datasets, hosted experiments, or deployed solutions and tools. In other words, instead of saying, e.g., “we analyzed data from an online service”, the authors may name the online service (search engine, social network, content sharing site, etc.) in question. The reviewers will be informed that naming organizations in papers does not necessarily imply that the authors are currently affiliated with said organization.
Camera-ready versions of accepted papers can and should include all information to identify authors, and should acknowledge any funding received that directly supported the presented research.
Submissions must present original work — this means that papers published or accepted to any peer-reviewed conference or a journal with published proceedings cannot be submitted here; also, authors must appropriately cite their prior work (considering the double-blind review policy).
Submissions available only online that have been previously presented orally, as posters or abstracts-only, or in venues with no formal proceedings, including workshops without proceedings or PhD symposia, are allowed. Authors may submit anonymized work that is already available as a preprint (e.g., on arXiv or SSRN) without citing it. Availability of non-anonymous preprints will not result in a desk rejection. Reviewers will be instructed not to actively look for such preprints, and finding such a preprint does not clash with our submission policies.
Concurrent submissions are not allowed – this means that papers that are currently under review cannot be submitted to this conference; conversely, while the paper is under review here, it should not be submitted elsewhere. The program committee works closely with other related venues with similar review timelines to ensure this policy is enforced.
The ACM has a strict policy against plagiarism, misrepresentation, and falsification that applies to all publications, and a policy stating who can be considered an author in a submission.
Authors are encouraged to include a section on the ethical use of data and/or informed consent of research subjects in their paper, when appropriate. You and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects (posted in 2021). Please ensure all authors are familiar with these policies.
Please consult the regulations of your institution(s) indicating when a review by an Institutional Ethics Review Board (IRB) is needed. Note that submitting your research for approval by such may not always be sufficient. Even if such research has been approved by your IRB, the program committee might raise additional concerns about the ethical implications of the work and include these concerns in its review.
This year, we will be piloting the use of the “Artifacts Available” badge in ACM’s Digital Library. If you release any code, dataset, or similar artifact to accompany your paper, and host it in a publicly available, archival repository for research artifacts that provides a Document Object Identifier (DOI), you are welcome to apply for this badge.
To apply, please mark the checkbox to apply for the “Artifacts Available” badge in the submission form, and indicate the DOI(s) of your artifact(s). Authors can update the content of their artifacts until the date of the acceptance notifications. A special subcommittee will check the artifacts of all accepted papers for availability and relatedness to the paper after the acceptance notification.
Please note that these artifacts are not visible to reviewers during the reviewing phase, and thus you do not need to anonymize them.
Conferences like The Web Conference happen because hundreds and thousands of members of the scientific community volunteer to help in many capacities. This includes ensuring that the conference maintains its high standards through constructive, useful, fair reviews.
Submission numbers are expected to rise, against a background of unprecedented challenges in our professional and private lives. For these reasons, we will put a call for nominations of additional reviewers that can also be authors of submitted papers. The nominations that are deemed qualified reviewers will be added to the PC for specific tracks, if there is need for additional reviewers.
To inform final decisions, The Web Conference 2023 will consider author rebuttals. Authors will have the chance to provide brief 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 consider the rebuttal from the authors where applicable.
Accepted papers will require a further revision to meet the requirements and page limits of the camera-ready format required by ACM. Instructions for the preparation of the camera-ready versions of the papers will be provided after acceptance.
All accepted papers will be published by ACM and will be accessible via the ACM Digital Library. To be included in the proceedings, at least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference, either in-person or online. Authors of each accepted paper should prepare and upload a 3-minutes video summary of their paper, which will be publicly available through the conference’s website. Subject to the time constraints of the conference program, each accepted paper for which at least one author is registered in-person will be given a brief “live” presentation slot for author(s) to present the paper in person during the conference.
All submission deadlines are end-of-day in the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone.
You can reach the chairs at: pc-chairs2023@thewebconf.org