Accepted papers from the Online First deadline were available “Online First” a year ahead of the conference, in fall 2017. The regular conference submission deadline, in spring 2018, will result in papers published just ahead of the actual conference.

Papers accepted in the 2017 Online First deadline will be presented with full recognition as CSCW regular track full papers, with an oral presentation at the conference. Online First papers will be treated equally to papers accepted in the spring 2018 (the final, regular) conference deadline, including eligibility for best paper awards, archival status, and citation style.

PACM (Proceedings of the ACM) is shorthand for a journal series -- attached mainly to ACM special interest groups -- that will change our publication format to something more closely resembling a journal article. In general, the paper submission process and assessment for CSCW will remain much the same. The main difference lies in how the work will be referenced.

Most interesting is that automatic indexing services like ISI will read our work as a journal, not as a conference proceedings. This should not only heighten the visibility of work of authors in this community, but also allow for better comparability with fields outside of Computer Science.

It is the intention to move all future CSCW conferences to the PACM publishing model.

This change has been considered over many years. Prior to 2010, CSCW occurred in the Fall, moving to the Spring when it became an annual conference. The Spring time frame was problematic, however, for two reasons:

1. There was too long a gap between when papers were submitted to the conference and when they were presented. Because the community wanted paper decisions before the CHI deadline, there was often a 5-month gap between final paper decisions and presentations, and a 9-month gap between paper submission and presentation.
2. Through a fairly broad community survey, we have tried to assess the impact of moving to the Fall. Obvious concerns have included the overlap not only with the ECSCW and GROUP conferences, but also with UIST, UBICOMP, HCOMP, and RecSYS, among other Fall conferences. However, it turned out that our biggest overlap was with CHI, and that having CSCW and CHI in the same general time period was problematic for many.

It was the combination of the timing of submissions and representation, as well as the overlap with CHI, that drove the steering committee to present the change to a Fall timeline, and to receive enough positive feedback to make the change.