Panels & Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

​​Important Dates

  • Thursday, May 22, 2025: Submissions due 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time.
  • Thursday, June 26, 2025: Notification of acceptance.
  • Tuesday, July 3, 2025: Camera-ready submissions due 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time.

What is a Panel?

A panel is a collection of people discussing a topic important to our field. Panels are an excellent venue for generating debate, raising new and interesting issues at CSCW, and hearing multiple points of view on a topic. CSCW panels are a forum for discussing provocative, controversial, innovative, emerging, boundary-spanning, and boundary-breaking issues. A panel is not a series of presentations. A high-quality panel devotes the bulk of its time to interaction between the discussants and possibly the audience.

Unlike paper sessions, which allow for detailed discussions of recently completed work, panels provide an opportunity to hear about what is on the horizon or what is already here but not yet recognized, acknowledged, or discussed.

We invite organizers to not only form panels with close colleagues who share similar points of view but to reach out to prospective panelists from across the CSCW community and beyond. We are also interested in panels that include representation from practitioners, activists, and scholars from other fields that may provide additional insight into the topic.

Accepted panels will have a scheduled, 90-minute long session at the conference. All Panels will follow an in-person format.

What is a Special Interest Group (SIG)?

A Special Interest Group (SIG) enables conference attendees to meet informally about a common interest, which may include specific technologies, societal concerns, curious human behaviors, or any other topic of interest to CSCW research. Unlike panels, which explore an already established CSCW topic, SIGs are an ideal venue for testing whether a topic new to CSCW can also attract a group of researchers interested in discovering and developing the topic within CSCW. A SIG is also an excellent space for dialog and may incorporate novel facilitation strategies, from group discussion to collective storytelling, roleplay, and even sketching activities, to help SIG participants creatively engage with a topic.

Accepted SIGs will have a scheduled, 90-minute long session at the conference. All SIGs will follow an in-person format.

Panel & SIG Topics

We are open to all topics that will stimulate thoughtful discussion relevant to CSCW practitioners and scholars. We are especially interested in topics of interest to diverse groups (geographically, methodologically, domains, etc.) within the CSCW community. 

Panels tend to be facilitated question-and-answer sessions with expert discussants, while SIGs aim to advance the understanding and community around specific areas of interest. Past CSCW or CHI SIGs may be excellent topics for CSCW 2025 panels! SIG sessions may seed research papers, grant proposals, or new conferences and workshops.

Submitting Panel/SIG Proposals

All Panel and SIG proposals must be submitted by the submission deadline and all proposals must include an Extended Abstract submitted as a single PDF.

The Extended Abstract should be no longer than 5 pages (including references) and should be formatted using the single column ACM Master Article Submission Template (the same template used for full papers).

Within the 5-page constraint, proposals should include:

  • Overview of the Panel/SIGs topic(s) and its relevance to the CSCW community
  • Proposed structure and format of the Panel/SIG, including how organizers will:
    • Encourage interaction with the audience.
    • Ensure the Panel/SIG is accessible to all participants.
  • One-paragraph biographical sketches of the organizers including names, affiliations, and describing their expertise related to the Panel/SIG
    • Panel proposals should also include brief bios for the invited panelists
  • Technical requirements

In addition to the Extended Abstract, SIG organizers must also submit Supplementary Materials describing the facilitation strategy and requirements for the in-person session at the conference (2-pages maximum). The Supplementary Materials should use the same template as the Extended Abstract. Supplementary Materials are not required for Panel proposals.

The following details about the SIG session should be included in the mandatory Supplementary Materials:

  • A brief description of the community (or communities) to which this SIG would be of interest and why it is of interest
  • Assumed attendee background
  • The approach for organizing and presenting the SIG
  • An informal schedule of discussion topics
  • A plan to attract a reasonable number of attendees 
  • Full name and contact information for the Organizer serving as the primary contact

All Panel and SIG submissions should be submitted using the Precision Conference System (PCS) 2.0: https://new.precisionconference.com

All Panel/SIG organizers are encouraged to pay attention to accessibility of their proposals. We suggest following the recommendations found in the SIGCHI Guide to an Accessible Submission and ACCESS tips for Conference Sessions. If you have any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions or sessions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility2025@cscw.acm.org.

Selection Process and Criteria

The review and selection is conducted by the Panel and SIG Co-Chairs. In the absence of a committee reviewing each proposal, authors will not receive detailed formal feedback on their submission. We will consider the following criteria during the selection process:

  1. Appeal to the community: Is the topic both timely and of wide enough appeal to attract a significant attendance? Is the topic sufficiently focused to allow for productive discussion during the Panel/SIG? If the topic is too narrow, the Panel/SIG may attract too few attendees. If the topic is too broad, making progress will be challenging in the relatively short duration of the Panel/SIG at the conference. SIG organizers, in particular, should clearly articulate a compelling reason for the SIG; we encourage them to describe the topic in a maximum of 20 primary references with approximately half of the references coming from ACM publications and the other half from sources beyond the ACM.
  2. Format: Is the proposed format conducive to discussion and shared insight? Will it be possible to achieve the aims?
  3. Diversity of perspectives: It helps to show that the Panel/SIG will be able to encompass a wide set of perspectives and that the organizers can accommodate and facilitate discussion across this breadth. The authors can address this criterion in their descriptions of the intended community, the assumed attendee background, and the home institutions and disciplines of the organizers. For SIGs, proposals will be ideally authored by at least two individuals representing at least two different organizations or communities.
  4. Continuity: Does the Panel/SIG support the development of a longer-term interest group, such as a follow-on SIG or other types of contributions at subsequent CSCWs and other conferences? If the topic is very recent or new, or a revival of an old topic, the authors should demonstrate that the topic will persist, rather than simply presenting it as the topic du jour. If the topic is a continuation of a previous Panels/SIG, it is necessary to present the latest developments within the topic and projections into the future.
  5. Anonymity: Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at the publication time. Submissions should NOT be anonymous. However, confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review and selection process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference, with the exception of title and author information, which will be published on the website prior to the conference.

Upon Acceptance of Your Submission

The corresponding author of a conditionally accepted Panel/SIG must follow the instructions for preparing and submitting the final version by the Camera-ready deadline. If the authors cannot meet these requirements by the Camera-ready deadline, the venue chairs will be notified and may be required to remove the Panel/SIG from the program. Because the conference is using the ACM Publication System (TAPS) process for producing the Extended Abstracts, the authors should use the Word/LaTeX Master Article templates located here. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your questions to pubs2024@cscw.acm.org.

All Panel/SIG organizers and panelists need to be registered for the conference and are responsible for paying their conference registration fees.

Panels & SIGs Co-Chairs

Pernille Bjørn (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Aleksandra Sarcevic (Drexel College of Computing and Informatics, USA)

For general questions, please contact us at panelsig2025@cscw.acm.org

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