[agents] CfP - The Web Conference 2022 Research Tracks

[Coralie Gregoire]

[Apologies for the cross-posting, this call is sent to numerous lists you may have subscribed to]

Contact us: contact at thewebconf.org 

We invite contributions to the research track of The Web Conference 2022 (formerly known as WWW). The conference will take place online and in Lyon, France, on April 25-29, 2022.

*Important dates*
* Abstract submission: October 14, 2021. This is compulsory for all papers.
* Full paper submission: October 21, 2021
* Rebuttal period: December 2-6, 2021
* Notifications to authors: January 13, 2022
All submission deadlines are end-of-day in the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone.

*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 different disciplines, including computing, computational social science, economics and political sciences. We encourage submissions that:
* present in-depth accounts and novel analyses that improve our understanding of the Web and its impact;
* introduce and evaluate technical and socio-technical systems and approaches enabled by core Web technologies, standards, and platforms; 
* make strides in democratising access to web content and technologies, making it more accessible and inclusive to different audiences. 

Our research interests are organised in thematic tracks. In 2022 these will be (in alphabetical order):
* Economics, monetisation and online markets: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/economics
* Search: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/search
* Security, privacy and trust: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/security
* Semantics and knowledge: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/semantics
* Social network analysis and graph algorithms: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/sna
* Social web: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/social-web
* Systems and infrastructure: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/systems
* User modelling, personalisation and accessibility: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/umap
* Web and society: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/umap
* Web mining and content analysis: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/wmca
* Web of things, ubiquitous and mobile computing: https://www2022.thewebconf.org/cfp/research/wmca

It is important to recall that this is a conference about the Web and how it has crucially enabled new research and applications. While the Web 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 API or a social network -- rather than answering a specific Web-related research challenge, are out of scope of the conference and will not be considered. 

In addition to the research tracks listed earlier, the conference also features a curated set of special tracks, which reflect emerging topics and trends in the community. In 2022 these will be: e-sport and massive online gaming; history of the Web; as well as Web for good, inclusiveness, and fairness.  You may want to consider them when deciding if and where to submit your work.

*Submission guidelines*
For the research tracks, the recommended paper length is 8 pages plus references; the total number of pages with references must not exceed 12 pages. The papers must be formatted according to the instructions below. Papers exceeding 12 pages or not following the formatting guidelines will be desk-rejected.
Submissions will be handled via Easychair, at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=thewebconf2022 . Please take some time to consider the most appropriate track for your work; where a paper is not submitted to a relevant track, the programme committee cannot guarantee that your paper will be matched to a more suitable one.

*Formatting the submissions*
Submissions must adhere to the ACM template and format published in the ACM guidelines at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template. 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 sample-sigconf template. For overleaf users, you may want to use https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sig-proceedings-template/bmvfhcdnxfty 

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. 

*Author identity*
The review process will be double-blind. The submitted document should not include 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) etc. Submissions not complying to this guidance will be desk-rejected.

You may explicitly refer in the paper to organisations that provided datasets, hosted experiments, or deployed solutions and tools. In other words, instead of saying that “we analysed the logs of a major search engine”, the authors may name the search engine in question. The reviewers will be informed that naming organisations in papers does not necessarily imply that the authors are currently affiliated with said organisation.

*Originality and concurrent submissions*
Submissions must present original work -- this means that papers published or accepted to any peer-reviewed venue with published proceedings cannot be submitted here; also, authors must appropriately cite their prior work (considering the double-blind review policy). Finally, submissions available only online and/or that have been previously presented orally, as posters, or in venues with no formal proceedings are allowed.

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 programme committee is working closely with other related venues with similar review timelines to ensure this policy will be enforced.

The ACM has a strict policy against plagiarism, misrepresentation, and falsification that applies to all publications. 

*Ethical use of data and informed consent*
As a published ACM author, you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM's new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects.

When appropriate, authors are encouraged to include a section on the ethical use of data and/or informed consent in their paper.

Note that submitting your research for approval by the author(s)’ institutional ethics review body (IRB) may not always be sufficient. Even if such research has been signed off by your IRB, the programme committee might raise additional concerns about the ethical implications of the work and include these concerns in its review. 

*Review process*
Each paper is submitted to one of the tracks listed earlier. 

Programme 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 and its review will be overseen by a senior programme committee member (SPC), who will also provide a meta-review.

The submission will be discussed between reviewers, SPC and track chairs, pre- and post-rebuttal (see below). Papers will be ranked based on a range of factors including: technical mert, originality, potential impact, quality of execution, quality of presentation, related work, reproducibility of results, and ethics. Based on this ranking, track chairs will recommend papers for presentation at the conference, inclusion in the processings, and awards. 

*Contributing to reviews*
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 expect all authors to be ready to give back to the community by reviewing for their track.

All authors will be automatically added to the review candidate pool as they submit their paper. Reviews will be monitored by the programme committee for quality; guidance on this will be made available in due time. It is important to familiarise yourself with it. Do not submit to the conference unless you are ready to review up to 6 papers for your track; authors who do not have the bandwidth or do not meet the review standards of the conference may find their paper(s) rejected.

*Rebuttal*
To inform final decisions, the Web Conference 2022 will consider 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*
Accepted papers will require a further revision in order 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 available via the ACM Digital Library. To be included in the Proceedings, at least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference and present the paper there.

*Programs committee chairs*
* Elena Simperl (King's College London)
* Deepak Agarwal (Pinterest)
* Aris Gionis (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)

You can reach the chairs at: pc-chairs2022 at thewebconf.org