Call for Papers - 18th ACM Web Science Conference 2026

Call for Papers - ACM WebSci'26 <https://websci26.org/?page_id=254>

Important Dates

* December 10, 2025: Paper submission
* February 4, 2026: Notification
* February 28, 2026: Camera-ready versions due
* May 26-29, 2026: 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 2026:  Managing Risks in the Era of Generative AI 
- How 20 Years of Web Science Research Can Help

Web content is influencing human experiences more than ever before. The 
rapid deployment of artificial intelligence (including large language 
models) has created new risks for humans in the digital environment. 
These risks include customly crafted misinformation at scale, realistic 
AI-generated harmful content and deepfakes, as well as fraudulent 
activities and scams becoming more effective thanks to AI. Trust and 
community have been eroded during this current era of the Web, and 
researching means to manage these risks on the Web is as essential as 
ever. The Web Science community has looked at this complex 
socio-technical system for 20 years, exploring its structure, dynamics, 
and impact on society. This year's conference especially encourages 
contributions investigating the risks for society on the web in the 
presence of artificial intelligence. Additionally, we welcome papers on 
a wide range of topics at the heart of Web Science.
In 2026, 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 architecture, philosophy, and evolution of the Web
*   Automation and AI in all its manifestations relevant to the Web
*   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

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 EasyChair: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=websci26
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.

Program Committee Chairs:

* Gianluca Demartini (The University of Queensland, Australia)
* Stefan Dietze (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf & GESIS, Germany)
* Jen Golbeck (University of Maryland, USA)

For any questions and queries regarding the paper submission, please 
contact the chairs at websci26@easychair.org

-- 
Prof. Dr. Stefan Dietze

Scientific Director Knowledge Technologies for the Social Sciences
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Web: https://www.gesis.org/en/kts

Professor of Data & Knowledge Engineering
Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
Web: https://www.cs.hhu.de/en/research-groups/data-knowledge-engineering

Member at L3S Research Center
Web: http://www.l3s.de

Phone: +49 (0)221-47694-421
Web: http://stefandietze.net

Received on Thursday, 2 October 2025 09:19:00 UTC