Proceedings of the Eighth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining

Abstract

It's our pleasure to welcome you to WSDM, the 10th annual ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, held in Cambridge, UK. WSDM is one of the premier conferences on web inspired research involving search and data mining. We are pleased to present here the proceedings of the conference. The program reflects the breadth and diversity of research in the field and showcases the latest developments in the field.The conference received a total of 505 submissions, which is 30% higher than any previous WSDM conference. The submitted papers cover the research of 1796 authors across 50 countries. Of these, 80 were accepted for publication. WSDM has historically used a two-tier single-blind review process. This year, we applied this same procedure, but we also experimented with double-blind reviews in some cases. We will present analysis of the data from this experiment before the conference itself. In the first stage of reviewing, four Program Committee members were assigned to each paper. In 90% of cases, all four reviews were completed; in 10% of cases, only three reviews were completed. The PC members provided ratings and comments while evaluating the papers according to the standard criteria of relevance, quality, reproducibility, clarity, and impact. This resulted in the collection of 1963 reviews. In the second stage, every paper was assigned to a Senior PC member. The SPC member was tasked to oversee a discussion amongst the reviewers and attempt to reach a consensus recommendation for the paper. The final decisions were based on all of the above. Ultimately 80 papers were selected for inclusion in the program. We owe a debt of gratitude to the 42 Senior PC members and the 242 PC members who participated in this process. The WSDM 2017 acceptance rate of around 16% is 1-2% lower than previous years, but the number of submitted papers is 30% higher. This year, continuing with WSDM tradition, single-track oral presentation slots were allocated to all 80 accepted papers. Out of the 80 papers, 24 were assigned long presentation slots and 56 were assigned short presentation slots. This assignment was based on the topic and results in each paper, with the Program Chairs assigning long slots to papers more likely to appeal to a broader audience. In addition to the oral presentations, all papers will be presented as posters in interactive sessions. The technical program this year features keynotes by prominent researchers from academia and industry: Ricardo Baeza-Yates (NTENT, USA; UPF, Spain; and U. de Chile), Claire Cardie (Cornell University), and Steve Young (Cambridge University). The program also features four invited Practice and Experience talks, which were introduced for the first time at WSDM 2014: Andrew Blake (Alan Turing Institute), Ralf Herbrich (Amazon), Anjali Joshi (Google) and Jan Pedersen (Microsoft). We would like to thank the keynote and P&E speakers for sharing their technical insights and research contributions with the conference attendees.