WSDM

It is our pleasure to welcome you to WSDM, the 13th annual ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM), held in Houston, Texas, USA, February 3-7, 2020. 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 615 submissions, which is a record breaking number, 20% higher than any previous WSDM conference. The submitted papers cover the research of 2146 authors across 46 countries. Of these, 91 were accepted for publication, with an acceptance rate less than 15%.

We follow the double blind review procedure adopted last year. In the first stage of reviewing, three Program Committee members were assigned to each paper. In 8% of cases, additional reviews were solicited. 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 1850 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 91 papers were selected for inclusion in the program. We owe a debt of gratitude to the 61 Senior PC members, the 212 PC members and the 210 external reviewers who participated in this process.

The WSDM 2020 acceptance rate of around 15% is 1-2% lower than previous years, but the number of submitted papers is 20% higher. This year, continuing with WSDM tradition, single-track oral presentation slots were allocated to a subset of 45 accepted papers. The remaining 46 papers were assigned to give spotlight short presentations. 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: Ed H. Chi (Google), Kristen Grauman (University of Texas at Austin & Facebook AI Research), Zhi-Hua Zhou (Nanjing University), and Bin Yu (University of California, Berkeley). We would like to thank the keynote speakers for sharing their technical insights and research contributions with the conference attendees.