Call for Papers - WebSci’26

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.

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-2026 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 2026 ACM Conferences!

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access (https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess).

Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).

Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open must pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Remember that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.

Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:
● $250 APC for ACM/SIG members
● $350 for non-members

This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help 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:
● 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.