CALL FOR PAPERS: ROLLING EXPERIMENT

Important: The rolling experiment is not designed to replace the usual deadline in 2026. As we explore the sociotechnical infrastructure around the move to rolling, we will select a small number of papers to test our process. To nominate your work to potentially be selected for our test phase, submit it via this form (accepted through 2/25 AoE timezone). CSCW Rolling will start accepting all papers sometime later in 2026.

Editors-in-Chief: Amy Bruckman (Georgia Tech), Eric Gilbert (University of Michigan)

The ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) is the premier venue for human-centered research in the design, use, and evaluation of technologies that support or affect social, cooperative, and collaborative practices in groups, organizations, communities, and networks. Bringing together top researchers and practitioners, CSCW explores topics across sociotechnical domains of work, home, education, healthcare, the arts, design, entertainment, and ethics, including social computing and social media, crowdsourcing, and technologies for co-located or remote collaboration, communication, education, work articulation, coordination, awareness, and information sharing.

Papers are expected to report on novel results from human-centered research discussing the design, development, use, and/or analysis of CSCW and social computing systems; or introduce new human-centered approaches to the conceptualization or critical analysis of such systems. Submissions exploring how computing technologies — including those linked to recent developments in AI, machine learning, robotics, and AR/VR — relate to questions of race, indigeneity, gender, and the environment are particularly encouraged, providing they are properly contextualized within cooperative, collaborative, or social computing issues. Submissions by members of underrepresented groups are particularly welcome. Authors exploring historical and sociotechnical perspectives on CSCW systems are also encouraged to submit.

In general, contributions must have a focus on social aspects of technology mediation and be properly contextualized in the CSCW literature, with clear reference to CSCW concepts and/or theories informing, being affected or being proposed. Please note that papers whose research contributions are primarily of relevance or benefit to individual users will be considered out of scope. For example, this would include papers whose major contribution is on user research findings that inform the design of a system primarily focused on benefiting a sole, individual user. This would also include research on interaction between a single user and any number of AI agents without attending to issues that are core to CSCW such as social computing, collaboration, or teaming. Additionally, systems-based or algorithmic research not making explicit how it involves aspects of cooperative, collaborative or social computing are not within the scope of CSCW.

We invite contributions to CSCW across a variety of human-centered research techniques, methods, approaches, and domains, including:

• Social and crowd computing. Studies, theories, designs, mechanisms, systems, and/or infrastructures addressing social media, social networking, wikis, blogs, online gaming, crowdsourcing, collective intelligence, virtual worlds, or collaborative information behaviors.
• CSCW and social computing system development. Hardware, architectures, infrastructures, interaction design, technical foundations, algorithms, and/or toolkits that are explored and discussed within the context of building new social and collaborative systems and experiences.
• Methodologies and tools. Novel human-centered methods, or combinations of approaches and tools used in building collaborative systems or studying their use.
• Critical, historical, ethnographic analyses. Studies of technologically enabled social, cooperative, and collaborative practices within and beyond work settings illuminating their historical, social, and material specificity, and/or exploring their political or ethical dimensions.
• Empirical investigations. Findings, guidelines, and/or studies of social practices, communication, cooperation, collaboration, or use, as related to CSCW and social technologies.
• Domain-specific social, cooperative, and collaborative applications. Including applications to healthcare, transportation, design, manufacturing, gaming, ICT4D, sustainability, education, accessibility, global collaboration, or other domains.
• Ethics and policy implications. Analysis of the implications of sociotechnical systems in social, cooperative and collaborative practices, as well as the algorithms that shape them.
• CSCW and social computing systems based on emerging technologies. Including mobile and ubiquitous computing, game engines, virtual worlds, multi-touch, novel display technologies, vision and gesture recognition, big data, MOOCs, crowd labor markets, SNSs, computer-aided or robotically-supported work, and sensing systems.
• Crossing boundaries. Studies, prototypes, or other investigations that explore interactions across fields of research, disciplines, distances, languages, generations, and cultures to help better understand how CSCW and social systems might help transcend social, temporal, and/or spatial boundaries.

Therefore, authors should clearly answer yes to the following:

• Does your work build upon, bridge, discuss, or cite prior CSCW work in a significant manner? Does it make clear how it offers new knowledge of benefit to the CSCW community?
• Have you clearly elaborated on how the results of your work are useful for thinking about the design of computing technologies to support cooperative/collaborative work or social interactions?

Authors must make sure that their submission is within the scope of the conference. During the submission, authors will be asked to write a short paragraph explaining how this is the case. Contributions out of scope will be desk rejected.

Send queries about paper submissions to cscw-rolling@acm.org.

CSCW is experimenting with a new format: a rolling, journal-style submission model. You may submit your paper whenever it is ready; there are no fixed submission deadlines. Submissions are reviewed on an ongoing basis, and accepted papers are published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACM HCI) and invited for presentation at the next CSCW conference.

As an experiment, only a small number of papers will be invited to pilot test the new process. To support diverse and high-quality contributions, CSCW Rolling provides the opportunity for multiple rounds of revision handled by the same editorial team when appropriate. This aligns the publication process more closely with how research is conducted, supports better work-life balance, and aims to shorten overall time from submission to publication.

Submissions to CSCW Rolling are divided into tracks by primary research method. Our tracks are:

• Qualitative — Track Editors: Anne Marie Piper (UC Irvine), and Nicola Dell (Cornell Tech)
• Quantitative — Track Editor: Darren Gergle (Northwestern)
• Mixed Methods — Track Editor: Sarita Schoenebeck (Michigan)
• Design and Theory — Track Editor: Fabiano Pinatti (University of Oslo)
• Systems — Track Editor: Michael Bernstein (Stanford)

Authors should choose the track that best fits their work. Track editors will also consider the problem domain and other aspects of the paper when selecting reviewers. Tracks are not firm boundaries; AEs may work across them as their expertise allows.

Rolling adopts an editorial-board model. Each submission is handled by an Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor for the appropriate methodological track, who oversees peer review by expert reviewers.

Like a journal, papers may go through multiple rounds of revision as merited by the work. Our goal is to move papers from submission to publication more quickly while maintaining high standards of quality and fairness for authors and reviewers.

The editorial team applies clear desk-reject criteria (for example, for out-of-scope, incomplete, improperly anonymized, or non-original submissions) to reduce unnecessary reviewing load while preserving a generous and mentoring stance toward junior scholars.

CSCW Rolling submissions will be managed through Manuscript Central (not PCS). Create an account in Manuscript Central, and submit your paper. During our initial experimental phase, you will need an invitation to submit. Authors submitting papers for peer review to ACM publications must comply with the SIGCHI Submission and Review Policy, including, but not limited to:

• That the paper submitted is original, that the listed authors are the creators of the work, that each author is aware of the submission and that they are listed as an author, and that the paper is an honest representation of the underlying work.
• Occasionally, a paper may have some overlap with a prior publication (for example, there is some overlap with the datasets used, but the analyses in each paper are considered to be a completely different and substantial contribution). This must be disclosed to the editorial team at time of submission. Authors must provide a detailed explanation of the overlap and distinct contribution of each paper in the “Comments (optional)” field on the submission form. Failure to disclose this information will lead to a Desk Reject decision. Please make sure to refer and adhere to the ACM policy in reuse of content from prior publication available at https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/simultaneous-submissions.
• Similarly, for parallel submissions (authors submitting multiple papers related to the same study), authors also must provide information about the relationship between submissions, as well as how they are different from one another in the “Comments (optional)” field of the submission form. Failure to disclose this information will lead to a Desk Reject decision. Please make sure to refer and adhere to the ACM policy in simultaneous submissions available at: https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/simultaneous-submissions.
• That the work submitted is not currently under review at any other publication venue, and that it will not be submitted to another venue unless it has been rejected or withdrawn from this venue.

For information about re-publication in English of work previously published in another language, please refer to section 1.5.4 of the ACM SIGCHI policy.

Confidentiality of submitted material will be maintained. Upon acceptance, the titles, authorship, and abstracts of papers will be used in the Advance Program. Submissions should contain no information or material that is or will be proprietary and/or confidential at the time of publication, and should cite no publication that will be proprietary or confidential at that time. Final versions of accepted papers must be formatted according to detailed instructions provided by the publisher. Copyright release forms must be signed for inclusion in the PACM HCI and the ACM Digital Library.

Authors should adhere to the new ACM policy in authorship, available at https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/new-acm-policy-on-authorship.

CSCW papers will be published under ACM Open Access.

Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 1,800 institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences (currently, around 70-75%).

To be included in ACM Open, the corresponding author must be affiliated with a participating institution. For APC-eligible articles (research, short paper, and survey) where none of the authors are currently from participating institutions, an APC will be required. Corresponding authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial or discretionary waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the APC Waivers and Discounts Policy. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.

Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will offer:

• $250 APC for ACM/SIG members
• $350 for non-members

This represents a 65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period. This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all conferences scheduled for 2026.

Note: ACM is not lowering APCs, but is instead contributing funds to temporarily subsidize APC pricing as the community adjusts to the Open Access program.

Papers are subject to anonymous reviewing. Submissions must have authors' names and affiliations removed, including references to universities, companies, labs, and cities. Any grant information that identifies the author(s) and their institution should be removed as well. Furthermore, obvious identifying statements and information that might confuse reviewers regarding the authors (e.g., mock authors' names originally in templates provided to demonstrate formatting) should be removed. Images used in the paper must NOT disclose the authors' identity or suggest affiliation. This policy includes all submitted materials, including supplemental materials. Papers that violate this policy will be desk rejected. Please check in particular the first page, headers and footers, images, the acknowledgments section, AND meta-data of all submitted files.

For resubmissions, make sure that the authors' identities are not disclosed in the annotated document submitted in addition to the clean version. If possible, check the document with tracked changes in different PDF readers. It is possible that some tracked-change information that is visible in a reader (e.g., Adobe Acrobat) is not visible in others (e.g., Preview). Citations should be done as if the authors were different people; e.g., Jane Smith should refer to and cite "prior work by Jane Smith" instead of "our prior work."

CSCW does not have a policy against uploading preprints to SSRN or arXiv before they are submitted for review at the conference. Nevertheless, to ensure the integrity of the peer review process, we ask that no authors publicize the work until the review process is complete. Please do not share any confidential information specific to a current review process publicly or on social media, with the exception of doing public exhibitions, festivals, and performances as part of the research where the name is integral to the work. We also ask reviewers to refrain from taking steps to learn about authors' identity during the peer review process.

Word authors: Because CSCW papers are published in PACM HCI, authors need to use the old interim ACM Small template, which is ONLY available at the following link: https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmhci/submission-templates

LaTeX authors need to use the template at https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions, and insert the acmsmall call.

Overleaf authors need to use the template at https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/acm-journals-new-master-template/vgtfrcvmrvxf, and use the acmsmall call.

Papers that use a completely different template will be desk rejected. Small variance on font styles, which is possible when authors do not have particular fonts installed in their computers, will be tolerated for the initial submission but will have to be fixed in case the paper is accepted for publication.

Note: In preparing revisions, authors should continue using the template they had used for their original submissions. Reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length. If a paper is shorter than 5000 words or exceeds 12,000 words, it will be subject to additional scrutiny. Papers whose length is incommensurate with their contribution will be desk rejected. Note that additional materials can be submitted as appendices but be aware that reviewers are not bound to decide based on these materials.

When you submit your paper, the system will ask for your cover letter. The cover letter must include two statements, each clearly labeled:

1. SCOPE STATEMENT: Please read the SCOPE section above carefully, and make sure your paper is in our scope. Notably, papers must include interaction among multiple humans supported or facilitated by computing technology to be CSCW. In your cover letter, please answer these two questions (1-2 sentences each):
1. How does your work build upon 1) prior CSCW work, or 2) work that CSCW typically concerns itself with?
2. How are the results of your work useful for thinking about the design of computing technologies to support collaborative work or social interactions?
2. SUBMISSION HISTORY: Has this work previously been submitted to another venue? Name the venue(s), and provide one to four bullet points explaining how the submission has now been improved since the last submission. Important: make sure to not compromise anonymization in how you answer this question. Please do not include full reviews.

In line with other SIGCHI conferences' (e.g., CHI) and computing conferences' (e.g., CVPR and KDD) policies on use of generative AI in writing papers, CSCW employs the following policy on the use of Large Language Models in paper writing.

Text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM), such as ChatGPT, must be clearly marked where such tools are used for purposes beyond editing the author's own text. Please carefully review the April 2023 ACM Policy on Authorship before you use these tools. The SIGCHI blog post describes approaches to acknowledging the use of such tools and we refer to it for guidance. Note that the LaTeX template will default to hiding the Acknowledgements section while in review mode – please make sure that any LLM disclosure is available in your submitted version. We will investigate submissions brought to our attention and desk reject papers where LLM use is not clearly marked or where an LLM is not appropriately used (e.g., including fake references generated by LLM, relying on AI-tools to generate ideas in the manuscript, etc.).

ACM policies forbid the uploading of author text into an LLM or similar system. Doing so, violates the author’s right to confidentiality and shares intellectual property without consent. Reviewing is a professional responsibility and violations are subject to investigation. In line with other SIGCHI conferences’ (e.g., CHI) and computing conferences’ (e.g., CVPR and KDD) policies on irresponsible reviews, CSCW employs the following policy on highly irresponsible reviews.

LLMs are NOT allowed to be used for writing the reviews nor the meta-reviews at any step. You cannot use an LLM to write your review. This is true for any LLM, whether you run it locally or use an API.

This policy includes but is not restricted to:

• You may NOT ask an LLM to write content for you. The review needs to be based on your own judgment.
• You may NOT share content from the paper with an LLM. This means, for example, that you cannot use an LLM to translate a review.

It is also expected that reviewers will submit fair and thoughtful reviews on time. Paper chairs, SPCs, and PCs will check (meta-)reviews for highly irresponsible reviews. If a review is flagged as “highly irresponsible,” we will investigate the review. Example cases of highly irresponsible reviews include: reviews that violate the above-mentioned LLM policy, missing or one-sentence reviews, reviews not relevant to the paper or that miss a substantial portion of the paper. Highly irresponsible reviews do not include cases where reviewers merely have some misunderstandings, miss small parts of the paper, or hold a different opinion from other reviewers or the PC. If the review is confirmed as “highly irresponsible,” the papers submitted by the reviewer will be desk rejected per discretion of the papers chairs. We might also report this incident and this reviewer to the ACM.

CSCW will be returning submissions to the primary contact author with one of the following decisions, along with the reviews, roughly 3-4 months from the initial submission (depending on the decision and where we are in the rolling experimental process).

• Conditional Accept with Minor Changes: Submissions that receive this decision are ready or nearly ready for publication, though they may require a few small changes. The final version of the paper must be submitted for approval by the corresponding Track Editor. The revision will be verified by theTrack Editor and if approved, the submission will be promoted to an accepted paper.
• Revise and Resubmit (multiple possible rounds): Submissions that receive this decision have real potential, but will require major portions rewritten or redone, then re-reviewed. The authors must ensure that the paper has been revised sufficiently to warrant re-review. To the extent possible, resubmissions will be assigned the same Track Editor, Associate Editor, and external reviewers for re-review. Upon re-review, submissions can receive one of two decisions: Conditional Accept with Minor changes, R&R again, or Reject. That is, the rolling process allows for multiple rounds of revisions.
• Reject: Submissions that receive this decision may not be ready for publication. Authors of rejected papers are recommended to resubmit their papers to CSCW or other venues in the future. Note that authors must wait at least four months to resubmit a paper that was previously rejected from CSCW Rolling.

Because CSCW now uses a rolling submission model, authors of papers rejected in previous CSCW cycles are welcome to submit substantially revised versions to CSCW Rolling—at least 4 months after receiving a Reject decision. Papers that are rejected from CSCW Rolling must wait four months from their rejection date to submit a revised version of the paper.

However, authors must describe the paper's submission history and briefly outline the changes in the cover letter when resubmitting. Failure to disclose the paper's submission history may lead to a desk reject decision. Editors and reviewers will have access to this description of the paper's submission history and may also request to review the detailed submission history.

Please notice that all resubmitted papers will be treated as a new submission, meaning that they may be assigned to a new handling editor and new reviewers, who are expected to provide fresh reviews based on the revised resubmission. This means that the new review team is not bound to the previous assessment of the paper. Papers resubmitted with no or marginal changes may be desk rejected.

Authors are encouraged to submit supplementary material when possible and when aligned with their methods. Authors are encouraged to submit links to pre-registrations on the Open Science Framework (OSF) when appropriate for their work. Authors are also encouraged to use open access repositories and make their data and other material FAIR when appropriate for their work. Authors are encouraged to describe efforts to make their work more reproducible. Reviewers are encouraged to support evolving approaches to supporting open and transparent research practices.

Authors may consider submitting a video that illustrates their work as part of the submission (no more than three minutes long). Videos are not required for paper submissions, but are encouraged, particularly for papers contributing novel systems or interaction techniques.

Accepted papers are invited to present at the corresponding conference, and authors can choose whether or not they wish to present. There is no guarantee that submitting at a particular time will mean presentation at a specific conference date. If a situation arises and an author who is scheduled to present at the conference is no longer able to, they should immediately reach out to the Papers Chairs to discuss alternative options. Presenting at the conference is strongly recommended, but not required.

Contact: cscw-rolling@acm.org