CommunityData:Conferences and Journals

From CommunityData

For folks who aren't aware of how this all works, here's the general publication process:

  1. You submit a paper to a journal or archival conference.
    • If a paper has been submitted somewhere for publication, you cannot submit it anywhere else before getting a decision. The exception is non-archival conferences, which typically allow you to present work that has been submitted elsewhere.
  2. The editor decides to either desk reject your article (the editor decides it isn't a good fit) or sends it out to reviewers.
  3. Reviewers provide written feedback to the editor. The editor decides whether to accept the article (very rare!), reject it (more common than we wish!), or ask you to "revise and resubmit" it. They return their decision to you, together with their review and the peer reviews.
    • If you get a rejection, then figure out what changes you want to make and send it out somewhere else
    • If you get a "revise and resubmit" (R+R) decision, then you get to decide whether it is worth the work the reviewers are asking for. Typically, you will both revise your paper and send a letter describing what you did.
  4. For conferences, there is (usually) only one round of revisions. After you submit your article, it's either accepted or rejected. For journals, there can be multiple rounds, where you may receive requests for additional revisions.
  5. Hopefully, after all this, your paper gets accepted! 🎉
  6. The journal / conference sends typeset proofs - this is your last chance to make changes!
  7. The journal / conference publishes your paper, and you publicize it!

Deciding where to submit a research project can be tough! This is a non-comprehensive list of some of the core conferences and journals that we see our research as being in conversation with. For each venue, there's a little bit of commentary to help you decide if it might be a good fit for your work.

Conferences[edit]

Non-archival[edit]

Non-archival means that submissions to a conference are not "published". In other words, you are free to submit the same or nearly the same research to another venue. Some folks look down on presenting research at multiple conferences but others think it's great to get feedback from different audiences.

In general, it's easier to get accepted to a non-archival conference. In addition, they basically never have an R+R requirement—they will pass on reviewer feedback, but you aren't required to do anything with it.

ICA (International Communication Association)[edit]

ICA is one of the two big communication conferences, and is probably the best conference for computational communication work. ICA is organized in divisions, which act semi-autonomously, and you submit papers to a division rather than to the conference. The divisions most aligned with CDSC research are probably Computational Methods, Information Systems, Communication and Technology (CAT), and Organizational Communication.


Deadline: Early November

Conference: Late May

NCA (National Communication Association)[edit]

NCA is the other big communication conference. It's in the US, in November. Like ICA, it's composed of divisions, with their own calls for papers. CDSC members have not been as active at NCA, but some divisions that overlap are Communication and the Future, Group Communication, Human Communication and Technology, and Organizational Communication.

Deadline: March

Conference: November

IC2S2 (International Conference of Computational Social Science)[edit]

IC2S2 is a multidisciplinary computational social science conference. They only require 2 page abstracts, which is nice. It's been growing quickly but has historically been a smallish conference.

Deadline: February

Conference: July

Archival Conferences[edit]

CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work)[edit]

CSCW is probably the conference where interests of CDSC members are nearest to the median interests of the conference. There are lots of folks interested in how people cooperate and communicate via digital tools and spaces, and how social and technical design influence their ability to cooperate and communicate.

Papers submitted to CSCW are published in the proceedings, and are archival. The submission schedule seems like it changes constantly, but for now (2023), it's a half-yearly cycle that looks like this:


  • Submit January 15 / July 15
  • Minor revisions by April 15 / October 15
  • Major revisions by October 15 / April 15
  • Conference in October (must be accepted by April)

cscw23_timeline-1024x576.png

Figure from https://cscw.acm.org/2023/index.php/submit-papers/

CHI (Human Factors in Computing Systems)[edit]

CHI is another HCI conference, but much broader than CSCW—it includes people working on hardware, etc. It's also much larger. It has a once-a-year cycle with a much shorter revision window. Papers are submitted in September, after reviews are received authors have ~5 weeks for a revision.

Deadline: mid-September

Conference: Late April or early May

CI (Collective Intelligence)[edit]

CI is a multidisciplinary conference focused on group decision making, game theory, simulations, etc. It used to be non-archival, but at least for 2023 it's combined with HCOMP and proceedings will be published.

Deadline: June

Conference: November

ICWSM (The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media)[edit]

Deadline: January 15, May 15, September 15

Conference: June

Journals[edit]

Journal of Communication[edit]

New Media and Society[edit]

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication[edit]

Information, Communication, and Society[edit]