Call For Papers - WebSci’27

Important Dates:

• December 15, 2026 Paper submission
• February 18, 2027 Notification
• March 4, 2027 Camera-ready versions due
• May 25-28, 2027 Conference dates

About the Web Science Conference:

Web Science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding the complex and multiple impacts of the Web on society and vice versa. The interdisciplinary field is well situated to address pressing issues of our time by incorporating various scientific approaches. We welcome quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research, including social and computer science techniques. In addition, we are interested in work exploring Web-based data collection, research ethics, and emerging methods. We also encourage studies that combine analyses of Web data and other types of data (e.g., from surveys or interviews) to help better understand user behavior online and offline.

Theme for Web Science 2027: Towards a Healthy, Safe, Flourishing and Equitable Web: Shaping our Digital Futures

The Web has become the infrastructure through which people learn, work, connect, and take part in public life. WebSci 2027 asks what it takes to make that infrastructure genuinely good - not just functional, but healthy, safe, flourishing, and equitable for everyone who relies on it. This means examining the health of information ecosystems and online communities, the design choices that help people and communities thrive, and the governance models that determine whose interests the Web serves. It means asking who benefits today, who is excluded, and who is most exposed to misinformation, manipulation, privacy risks, and other harms - and how design, policy, and technical innovation can close those gaps instead of widening them.

WebSci 2027 especially encourages contributions that articulate and advance this positive vision for the Web's next decade. We also welcome papers across the full range of Web Science topics, from technical foundations to social, political, economic, and ethical dimensions.

The conference’s best papers will invited for submissions to a special issue for ACM Transactions on Social Computing

In 2027, we will also be able to allocate a limited amount of funding for student travel provided by SIGWEB and WebIST.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Understanding the Web

• Trends in globalization and fragmentation of the Web
• The infrastructure, architecture, philosophy, and evolution of the Web
• Automation and AI in all its manifestations relevant to the Web (e.g. use of AI agents)
• The interrelationship between the structure of the web and social behavior
• Critical analyses of the Web and Web technologies
• The spread of large models on the Web
• Research on Web-like networked digital ecosystems, such as (i) networked smartphone apps, (ii) social, digital wearables, and (iii) other emerging technologies

Making the Web Inclusive

• Issues of discrimination and fairness
• Intersectionality and design justice in questions of marginalization and inequality
• Ethical challenges of technologies, data, algorithms, platforms, and people on the Web
• Safeguarding and governance of the Web, including anonymity, security, and trust
• Inclusion, literacy, and the digital divide
• Human-centered security and robustness on the Web

The Web and Everyday Life

• Social machines, crowd computing, and collective intelligence
• Web economics, social entrepreneurship, and innovation
• Legal and policy issues, including rights and accountability for the AI industry
• The creator economy: Humanities, arts, and culture on the Web
• Politics and social activism on the Web
• Relationships, organization, and social interaction on the Web
• Online education and remote learning
• Health and well-being online
• Social presence in online professional event spaces
• The Web as a source of news and information

Doing Web Science

• Data curation, Web archives, and stewardship in Web Science
• Temporal and spatial dimensions of the Web as a repository of information
• Analysis and modeling of human and automatic behavior (e.g., bots)
• Analysis of online social and information networks
• Detecting, preventing, and predicting anomalies in Web data (e.g., fake content, spam)
• Novel analysis techniques for Web and social network analysis
• Recommendation engines and contextual adaptation for Web tasks
• Web-based information retrieval and information generation
• Supporting heterogeneity across modalities, sensors, and channels on the Web.
• User modeling and personalization approaches on the Web.

Format of the submissions:

Please upload your submissions via: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=websci27

There are two submission formats:

1. Full paper should be between 6 and 10 pages (including references, appendices, etc.). Full papers typically report on mature and completed projects.
2. Short papers should be up to 5 pages (including references, appendices, etc.). Short papers will primarily report on high-quality ongoing work that is not mature enough for a full-length publication.

All papers should adopt the current ACM SIG Conference proceedings template (acmart.cls). Please submit papers as PDF files using the ACM template, either in Microsoft Word format (available at https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template under “Word Authors”) or with the ACM LaTeX template on the Overleaf platform, which is available at https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sig-proceedings-template/bmvfhcdnxfty. In particular, please ensure that you are using the two-column version of the appropriate template.

All contributions will be judged by the Program Committee by at least three referees based on rigorous peer review standards for quality and fit for the conference. Additionally, each paper will be assigned to a Senior Program Committee member to ensure review quality.

WebSci-2027 review is double-blind. Therefore, please anonymize your submission: do not put the author(s)' names or affiliation(s) at the start of the paper, and do not include funding or other acknowledgments in papers submitted for review. References to the authors’ own prior relevant work should be included, but should not specify that this is the authors’ own work. It is up to the authors’ discretion how much to further modify the body of the paper to preserve anonymity. The requirement for anonymity does not extend outside the review process, e.g., the authors can decide how widely to distribute their papers over the Internet. Even in cases where the author’s identity is known to a reviewer, the double-blind process will serve as a symbolic reminder of the importance of evaluating the submitted work on its own merits without regard to the author’s reputation.

Authors who wish to opt out of publication proceedings will be given this option upon acceptance. This will encourage the participation of researchers from the social sciences who prefer to publish their work as journal articles. All authors of accepted papers (including those who opt out of proceedings) are expected to present their work at the conference.

ACM Publication Policies:

1. By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that 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. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.
    
2. Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start, and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. The collection process started in 2022 and will be a requirement. We are committed to improving author discoverability, ensuring proper attribution, and contributing to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.
    
3. For guidelines on the use of generative AI tools, please refer to https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/frequently-asked-questions

Important update on ACM's new open access publishing model for 2027 ACM Conferences!

All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, are 100% Open Access. Authors have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With approximately 3,000 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 76%).

Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To determine whether an APC applies, consult the list of participating institutions and review ACM's APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Waivers are rare and granted according to specific ACM criteria.

To support authors and institutions as they continue to adapt to ACM's Open Access publishing model, the ACM Council has approved subsidized APC rates for calendar year 2027, allowing more time for institutions to join ACM Open.

• $500 APC for ACM/SIG members
• $750 for non-members

This represents a 29% discount off current APC list pricing, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period.

You can find an FAQ here: Open Access Model for ACM and SIG Sponsored Conferences: Frequently Asked Questions, and more information here: Open Access Publication & ACM.

Program Committee Chairs:

• Jürgen Pfeffer (Technical University of Munich)
• Jussara M. Almeida (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
• Subhayan Mukerjee (National University of Singapore)