--- name: webconf-topic-selection description: Use when deciding whether a project belongs at the Web Conference (WWW) at all, which of the ten research tracks should review it, whether the short-paper or Web4Good lane fits better, and when the work should instead route to WSDM, SIGIR, CIKM, KDD, ICWSM, WebSci, or an ML flagship. --- # Web Conference Topic Selection Two decisions, in order: **is the work web-native**, and **which track's reviewer pool should judge it**. Both are made by the authors, both are effectively irreversible at the deadline, and the second is as consequential as the first because the venue reviews inside tracks. ## Decision 1: the web-nativeness test Ask: *if the Web's specific structure disappeared, would this contribution still make sense?* Web-native work depends on at least one of: open hypertext and link structure; platform mechanics and incentives; live, adversarial, user-generated content; web-scale heterogeneity; or the socio-technical coupling of users and algorithms. A generic model that merely *evaluates* on a web dataset fails the test — the dataset is swappable, so an ML venue's pool serves it better. ```text Web-native? -> route Contribution needs link/platform/user -> Web Conference candidate; go to structure to exist Decision 2 Contribution is a general method; web -> NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR or KDD, cite data is one evaluation among many web results as evidence Contribution is about people/society, -> ICWSM or WebSci if measurement/ computation is instrumental interdisciplinarity dominates Contribution is retrieval effectiveness -> SIGIR first; Web Conference if the per se open-web setting changes the problem Contribution is mining methodology with -> WSDM (methods-first) or KDD modest web specificity (mining/deployment-first) Contribution is a deployed web system's -> Web Conference Industry track, not practice lessons the research tracks ``` ## Decision 2: track fit (2026 lineup) The 2026 research tracks, with the question each pool is primed to ask: | Track (2026) | The pool's primary question | |---|---| | Economics, online markets and human computation | Are incentives/welfare modeled, not just predicted? | | Graph algorithms and modeling for the Web | Does the graph method respect web-graph properties? | | Responsible Web | Are harms, fairness, or governance the *contribution*? | | Search and retrieval-augmented AI | What beats strong current retrieval/RAG baselines? | | Security and privacy | Is there a real threat model and adversary? | | Semantics and knowledge | Does it advance KGs/ontologies/structured data on the web? | | Social networks and social media | Is the social measurement or model construct-valid? | | Systems and infrastructure (Web, mobile, WoT) | Does it hold under realistic load/deployment? | | User modeling, personalization and recommendation | Is the personalization gain real and leak-free? | | Web mining and content analysis | Is the extracted signal novel and robust at scale? | Tie-breaks: pick the track whose *evidence you actually have*, not whose name flatters the abstract. A RAG-for-recommendation paper with strong offline ranking tables but no retrieval-baseline sweep survives better in "User modeling ..." than in "Search and retrieval-augmented AI." Track names are re-cut most editions — confirm the current list before deciding, and remember the cap: at most 7 submissions per author across all research tracks in 2026. ## Lane selection inside the venue - **Full research paper** (8+refs+appendix ≤ 12 pages): a complete evidence program. The default. - **Short paper** (4 pages incl. references in 2026; main proceedings): one sharp idea with focused evidence; the later deadline (+6 weeks in 2026) is a schedule fact, not a quality discount. - **Web4Good** (2026 special track; main proceedings): work whose center is measurable societal benefit; do not spin ordinary work into it. - **Industry track**: deployment truth over methodological novelty; different platform (OpenReview in 2026) and reviewer expectations. - **Workshops** (companion proceedings): early-stage or community-building work. ## The two chronic misroutes 1. **The dressed-up ML paper**: a general architecture with WWW formatting and one web dataset. Track panels detect it with the swappability question, and the review that follows ("better suited to a specialized venue") wastes a year. Route it to the ML flagship and cite the web experiment as evidence there. 2. **The homeless interdisciplinary paper**: strong social-science finding, thin computational novelty, submitted to a methods-leaning track. It needed "Social networks and social media" (measurement-tolerant) or ICWSM. The fix is pool choice, not more models. ## Boundary cases of the current era - **LLM/RAG papers.** The venue added "Search and retrieval-augmented AI" as a 2026 track, so LLM work is welcome — *when the Web is load-bearing*: retrieval over live/adversarial corpora, LLM-generated content polluting web ecosystems, agents navigating real sites. An LLM fine-tuning method evaluated on static QA benchmarks remains an ML-venue paper wearing a web costume. - **Dataset and benchmark contributions.** The 2026 lineup had no dedicated resource track (unlike some earlier editions and unlike KDD's separate datasets-and-benchmarks track); a dataset paper competes inside a topical track on the strength of its measurement or enabling analysis. Check the current edition's calls before assuming either way. - **Web3/blockchain, WoT, and mobile.** In 2026 these lived inside "Systems and infrastructure for Web, mobile, and WoT" and the economics track rather than as standalone tracks — evidence expectations follow the host track, not the subfield's own conferences. - **Ethics-centered work.** If harms analysis is the contribution, "Responsible Web" is the pool primed for it; if harms are one section of a methods paper, stay in the methods track and let the ethics paragraph do its job. ## Commitment checklist - [ ] One-sentence web-native mechanism written (it becomes page 1 — `webconf-writing-style`). - [ ] Track chosen by evidence held; second-choice track named in case the lineup changes at the portal. - [ ] Lane chosen (full/short/Web4Good/industry/workshop) with the calendar (`webconf-workflow`) in view. - [ ] Per-author submission counts across the team checked against the cap. - [ ] The nearest sibling-venue alternative named, so the team knows its plan B. ## Output format ```text [Web-native] yes: / no: [Track] (evidence basis); fallback [Lane] full / short / Web4Good / industry / workshop [Misroute risks] [Plan B] ```