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Page last updated: October 19, 2021
You can get the last official version of this document at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u0giMYMA9rZHU6lkj5w69IjQ9LLA0o7EQo-LrND11bY
- Are submissions single or double column? Call for papers says single, but that means much shorter papers.
There was an error in the call for papers, which has been corrected now. Submissions remain double column, as in the past. - Do you allow short papers?
Papers can be as short or as long as they have to be, within the page limits. We don’t have a distinct category for short papers in 2022, which means that papers, no matter what page length, will be reviewed according to the same criteria. - Is my work in scope of the Web conference?
Only if it does research about the Web, for instance a Web technology, tool, platform, standard, community, phenomenon etc. Here are examples of works which are not in scope of this conference and will be desk rejected. The list is not exhaustive and does not make any value judgement on the works; it merely delineates what’s the focus of WWW.- Papers that merely propose an improvement to a general-purpose NLP or machine-learning method, without explicit connection to a Web-related application. There are many excellent venues for this type of work e.g., ACL, KDD, NeurIPS, ICLR, IJCAI, AAAI etc.
- Approaches in any computing disciplines making use of Web data endpoints, Web APIs, platforms etc as a service.
- Approaches using social networks and other communities as a service e.g. to disseminate a survey.
- What track shall I pick for this work?
You need to narrow down a small set of tracks and if in doubt contact the track chairs. - I have a question about the special tracks
Please contact the special track chairs or the general chairs about this. Special tracks are managed independently from the research tracks. A CfP for these tracks should go public by September 17th the latest. - Can I include an appendix? How long?
The 2022 organisation committee decided to allow for up to 2 additional pages of supplementary material within the 12 pages limit. Please make sure that the paper is self-contained without the supplementary materials. Reviewers are not obliged to look through it when commenting on your paper. Please do not misuse the additional pages to include new content, for instance new experimental data. The total page limit remains 12 pages and the upper limit for content remains 8 pages. Examples:- 1 page of supplementary and 3 pages of references are compliant.
- 3 pages of supplementary and 1 page of references are not compliant.
- How can I make my implementation and/or datasets available to the reviewers for reproducibility purposes?
We strongly support and encourage reproducible science. To make your code and/or datasets available to the reviewers, you can use an anonymous github account, dropbox link, or similar service. Make sure that the sharing account or link, as well as the code and datasets are properly anonymized. - Can I submit a paper that is already available as a preprint?
Yes, you can. Publishing your paper as a non-anonymous preprint (e.g., on arXiv) will not result in rejection. Make sure that your WebConf submission is properly anonymized and it does not cite the preprint. Reviewers will be instructed not to actively look for such preprints, but encountering them will not constitute a conflict of interest. - Why do I need to review for the conference where I submit a paper?
Many academic conferences experience a huge rise in the numbers of submissions, but struggle to recruit reviewers to keep up with these numbers and ensure every work receives fair, constructive feedback. For 2022, we have implemented a combination of best practices used by various other A* events of this size:- actively encouraging people to volunteer to review;
- contacting people who reviewed in the past and asking them to recommend additional reviewers where applicable;
- asking authors to share the review load.
These three measures will hopefully ensure that we have a critical mass of reviewers available to make the review load manageable for everyone.
- How will you ensure the quality of the reviews?
Just like we need to have enough reviewers to keep the load manageable to everyone, we also need to ensure that reviews are of good quality. We have implemented a number of policies to do so:- all PC members are vetted by the track chairs to ensure they have a relevant profile and experience to review at TheWebConf; this applies also to people volunteering to review, and to paper authors, who need to make themselves available to review, if selected by the track chairs;
- senior SPCs oversee the reviewing process, send reminders, appoint emergency reviewers, and suggest areas of improvement for sub-par reviews;
- experience from previous years, both in this conference and others, suggests that most reviewers go about their duties well.
At the same time, every year we also experience a small (lower double digit) percentage of reviewers who remain disengaged with the process despite numerous reminders and suggestions. For these cases, we will not acknowledge the reviewer in the PC list in the proceedings and on the website, and may not invite them again to review in future editions of the conference.