Call for Papers

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we are planning for a hybrid conference and will accommodate online presentations where needed.

ACM HT – Hypertext and Social Media conference – is a premium venue for high-quality peer-reviewed research on hypertext theory, systems and applications. It is concerned with all aspects of modern hypertext research including social media, linked open data and knowledge graphs, information exploration and visualisation, dynamic and computed hypermedia, as well applications for digital arts, culture, and humanities. 

ACM HT is sponsored by ACM SIGWEB. The proceedings are published by the ACM and will be part of the ACM Digital Library.

We acknowledge that some research might be influenced by constraints imposed by Covid-19 (e.g., difficulty of running lab studies). Thus, we welcome submissions introducing novel methodologies arising from a need to conduct research in new ways.

All accepted papers will be published by ACM and will be available via the ACM Digital Library. Papers will be accessible from the HT ‘22 web site through ACM OpenToc Service for one year after publication in the ACM Digital Library. To be included in the Proceedings, at least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference and present the paper there.

ACM HT is co-located and collaborates with the ACM UMAP conference. HT takes place one week before UMAP, and uses the same submission dates and formats. We expect authors to submit their Web-related work without a focus on personalization to HT and invite authors to submit research on personalized systems to UMAP. The two conferences will organize one shared track on personalized recommender systems (same track chairs and PC, see the track description).

Submission instructions

Tracks

Social Web content, language and network

Track chair: Marcelo Armentano (ISISTAN Research Institute, Argentina)

The social web refers to the social relations that link people and content in the World Wide Web. The enormity and high variance of the information that propagates through large user communities influence the public discourse in society and set trends and agendas in topics that range from marketing, education, business and medicine to politics, technology, and the entertainment industry. Contributions to this track may focus on both content and structure of the web, as well as behaviour of users. This includes the study of behaviour, norms, and psychological perceptions that characterise Web-mediated social interactions and might help either limiting undesirable outcomes (e.g., conflict, hate speech, misinformation) or promoting positive social dynamics (e.g., cooperation, integration, support, knowledge diffusion). Contributions focusing on multimodal social interactions (i.e., not limited to text) are particularly welcome.

  • Web Mining & Content Analysis
  • Opinion mining
  • Emotion detection
  • Computational social science
  • Credibility of Social Media Content, bias, filter bubbles 
  • User/content trustworthiness
  • Hate speech and fake news detection
  • Social Network Analysis
  • Social Influence Analysis
  • Collaborative annotations
  • Behavioral Monitoring & Change
  • Dataset collection and processing
  • Crowdsourcing for the web

Extended versions of selected papers presented at the conferences could be selected to appear in the International Journal of: Online Social Networks and Media.

Digital humanities, culture and society

Track chair: Jessica Rubart (Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Germany)

In the Digital Humanities track, we seek submissions contributing to the intersection between computer sciences on the one hand and the humanities and social sciences on the other hand. The Hypertext and Social Media conference has always had strong contributions related to digital humanities and new media topics. By studying these fields, we can better understand cultural effects of digital technologies or how people behave in social situations. This track invites contributions on the theory, methods and applications of Digital Humanities including, but not limited to:

  • Gaming and gamification
  • Electronic literature and narrative
  • Storytelling, hyperfiction and interactive fiction
  • Digital art composition and drama
  • Automated analysis of narratives
  • Automated story or (semantic) link generation
  • Digital journalism and citizen/collaborative news
  • Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, Ethics, Bias in Web Search
  • Human Computation & Crowdsourcing
  • Urban data science,  Smart cities
  • Personal Health and Well-being 
  • Inclusive technologies
  • Culturale heritage solutions
  • Language and identity
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Semantic archives

Extended versions of selected papers presented at the conferences could be selected to appear in the  ​​International Journal of Digital Humanities.

Information exploration and visualisation

Track chair: Claus Atzenbeck (Hof University, Germany)

Hypertext has always had a strong connection to information structuring. In today’s world, where we are confronted with huge amounts of information and extensive communication over social or corporate networks, research on the representation and visualization of hypertext structures becomes even more important. This includes issues related to user interaction with or navigation in these structures, including multimodal or collaborative aspects. Human-computer interaction can also be supported by specialized exploration tools or AI-based, intelligent components trained to support information exploration in hypertexts. This track also welcomes submissions on surveys, theories, and cognitive or cultural aspects related to information exploration or visualization of hypertexts.

  • Information structuring and representation
  • Hypertext navigation
  • Hypertext visualization
  • User interactions with hypertexts
  • Collaborative information exploration
  • Collaborative hypertext user interfaces
  • Hypertext system infrastructures
  • Multimodal approaches to hypertext exploration or presentation
  • AI approaches for supporting information exploration in hypertexts
  • Semantic-based exploration
  • Semantic Web, ontologies and knowledge graphs
  • Ontology-based content visualisation
  • Theories of hypertext or information, e.g. new models or paradigms
  • Surveys related to information exploration or visualisation of hypertexts
  • Cognitive aspects of information exploration
  • Cultural differences in hypertext presentation and exploration

Extended versions of selected papers presented at the conferences could be selected to appear in different special issues in the International Journal of New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (NRHM).

Personalized Recommender Systems*

Track Chairs: Osnat ‘Ossi’ Mokryn (University of Haifa, Israel), Eva Zangerle (University of Innsbruck, Austria) and Markus Zanker (University of Bolzano, Italy)

(*) This is a joint track between ACM Hypertext and ACM UMAP (same track chairs, overlapping PC). Authors planning to contribute to this track can submit to either conference, depending on their broader interest in either Hypertext or UMAP. Papers will be presented at the conference the paper was submitted to, but attendees will be able to join the sessions of both the UMAP conference and the Hypertext conference. Track chairs will invite selected submissions to be extended for a special issue in New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia (Taylor & Francis). 

Personalized, computer-generated recommendations have become a pervasive feature of today’s online world. From the traditional book and movie recommendations, to suggestions of what we should eat and wear or where we should travel, recommender systems are seamlessly embedded in our daily lives. The underlying recommender systems are designed to help users and providers in a number of ways. From a user’s viewpoint, these systems assist consumers by identifying relevant and appealing items (e.g., products and services) within large collections. From a provider’s perspective, recommender systems have shown to be valuable tools to steer consumer behavior. Regardless of who are the main stakeholders, the design of recommender systems requires the careful consideration of various aspects, including the choice of the user modeling approach, the recommendation algorithm itself, and the user interface.

This track aims to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss open challenges, latest solutions and novel research approaches in the field of recommender systems. In addition to mature research works addressing any of the aforementioned technical aspects pertaining to recommendations, we also particularly welcome research contributions that address questions related to the user perception and the business value of recommender systems.

Topics include (but are not limited to):

  • User modeling and preference elicitation
  • Recommendation algorithms including aspects of scalability and performance
  • Context-aware recommender systems (including temporal, social, and geographical)
  • Psychological aspects of recommendation (e.g., psychologically-informed user- and item-modeling and recommendation perception)
  • Business value of recommendation systems and multi-stakeholder environments
  • Responsible recommendation, including algorithmic bias and fairness, filter bubbles, ethics, and privacy
  • Evaluation of personalized recommender systems
  • Explanations, transparency, and trust for recommender systems
  • Conversational and sequence-aware Recommender Systems
  • Case studies of real-world implementations
  • Recommendation in non-traditional domains (e.g., education, health, e-governance, tourism, fashion, energy)

Submission and Review Process

Papers will be submitted through EasyChair.

All submissions and reviews will be handled electronically.

Content expectations

Reviewers will evaluate papers based on their significance, originality, rigor, and contribution to the field. Papers that are out of scope, incomplete, or lack sufficient evidence to support the basic claims, may be rejected without full review.

Papers should report on original and substantial contributions of lasting value. Described work should concern theory and/or practice of HT. Moreover, papers showcasing innovative use of HT and exploring the benefits and challenges of applying HT technology in real-life applications and contexts are welcome. 

Evaluations of proposed solutions/applications must be commensurate with the claims made in the paper. Depending on the intended contribution, this may include simulation studies, offline evaluations, A/B tests, or controlled user experiments. 

Research procedures and technical methods should be presented in sufficient detail to ensure scrutiny and reproducibility. We recognize that user data may be proprietary or confidential, but we encourage the sharing of (anonymized, cleaned) data sets, data collection procedures, and code. 

Results should be clearly communicated and implications of the contributions/findings for HT and beyond should be explicitly discussed. A discussion of the ethical considerations behind / implications of the presented work and/or its intended application is expected where appropriate. This includes an acknowledgment of ethical considerations for papers that include human-subjects research.

Length and formatting

The maximum length is 14 pages (excluding references) using the template indicated below (new ACM single column format). We encourage papers of any length up to 14 pages; reviewers will be asked to comment on whether the length is appropriate for the contribution. Shorter papers should generally report on advances that can be described, set into context, and evaluated concisely; they are not “work-in-progress” reports but rather complete reports on a smaller or simpler-to-describe but complete research work. Longer papers should reflect more complex innovations or studies and should have a thorough discussion of related work. Appendices count toward the page limit—we recommend that supplementary material is linked to an external source using an anonymized URL. 

Each accepted paper will be included in the conference proceedings and presented at the conference. 

Papers must be formatted as a single-column manuscript according to the new workflow for ACM publications. The templates and instructions are available here: https://www.acm.org/publications/taps/word-template-workflow.

Available templates include:

Note: Accepted papers will be subject to a further revision to meet the requirements of camera-ready format required by ACM. We strongly recommend the usage of LaTeX/Overleaf for the camera-ready papers to minimize the extent of reformatting. Users of the Word template must use a recent version Microsoft Word(Windows: Word 2007 or above, Mac: Word 2011 or above; other formats such as Open Office, etc., are not admitted) for the camera-ready submission to avoid incompatibility issues. Instructions for the preparation of the camera-ready versions of accepted papers will be provided after acceptance. This might include instructions to prepare a video of the accepted contribution.

Authors are strongly encouraged to provide “alt text” (alternative text) for floats (images, tables, etc.) in their content so that readers with disabilities can be given descriptive information for these floats that are important to the work. The descriptive text will be displayed in place of a float if the float cannot be loaded. This benefits the author as well as it broadens the reader base for the author’s work. Moreover, the alt text provides in-depth float descriptions to search engine crawlers, which helps to properly index these floats. Additionally, authors should follow the ACM Accessibility Recommendations for Publishing in Color and SIG ACCESS guidelines on describing figures.

Should you have any questions or issues going through the instructions above, please contact support at acmtexsupport@aptaracorp.com for both LaTeX and Microsoft Word inquiries.

Accepted papers will be later submitted to ACM’s new production platform where authors will be able to review PDF and HTML output formats before publication. Extended versions of selected papers presented at the conference could be selected to appear in different special issues in international journals according to the specific tracks (see the below for details).

HT uses a double blind review process. Authors must omit their names and affiliations from submissions, and avoid obvious identifying statements. For instance, citations to the authors’ own prior work should be made in the third person. Failure to anonymize your submission results in the desk-rejection of your paper.

Ethical Review and Human-Subjects Research Considerations

HT expects papers to include a discussion of the ethical considerations behind / implications of the presented work and/or its intended application where appropriate. HT further expects all authors to comply with ethical standards and regulatory guidelines associated with human subjects research, including research involving human participants and research using personally identifiable data. Papers reporting on such human subjects research must include a statement identifying any regulatory review the research is subject to (and identifying the form of approval provided), or explaining the lack of required review. 

The ACM Code of Ethics gives the HT program committee the right to (desk-)reject papers that perpetuate harmful stereotypes, employ unethical research practices, or uncritically present outcomes/implications that clearly disadvantage minoritized communities. Reviewers will be asked to consider whether the research was conducted in compliance with professional ethical standards and applicable regulatory guidelines.

Important Dates

  • Paper Abstracts:   February 10, 2022 (mandatory)
  • Full paper:             February 17, 2022
  • Notification:          April 11, 2022

Note: The submissions deadlines are at 11:59pm AoE time (Anywhere on Earth)

Program Chair

Federica Cena, University of Torino, Italy