Call for Competition Proposals

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Proposals should emphasize inclusivity, both in terms of the organizing team and the participants. We encourage organizers to consider recognition tiers that promote broad participation, including awards for underrepresented groups or student participants. Collaborating with affinity groups to host online bootcamps or similar initiatives aimed at increasing diversity is also encouraged.

Accepted competitions will feature in a dedicated Competition Track at WWW 2025, where participants and organizers will present and discuss the results. We look forward to hosting innovative and impactful competitions that attract a diverse, interdisciplinary group of participants.

Competition proposals should be submitted via Easychair by Oct 20th, 2024 (AOE). Please adhere to the provided templates and guidelines when preparing your submission. 

• Title of the competition.
• Description of the scientific or technological challenge and its relevance to the WWW community.
• Dataset details, including accessibility.
• Evaluation metrics and criteria for ranking participants.
• Competition format, including rules, schedule, and fairness mechanisms.
• Organizing team: List of members, their expertise, and commitment to inclusivity.
• Inclusiveness plan: Strategy to ensure diverse participation.
• Timeline for competition launch, duration, and completion.
• Awards: We encourage you to think about awards beyond the money prize.
• Implementation Details:
  • Competition infrastructure. Which competition infrastructure do you plan to use (e.g., Kaggle, or your own)? Is the competition platform you chose equally accessible to participants all over the world?
  • Team work. Explain how the host will organize a team dedicated to the Competition. For each team member, please include a list of their roles, responsibilities, and their commitment.
  • Are there any privacy concerns for the released data? Have you obtained the rights to release the data for the competition from your legal counsel? What type of report, presentation, code do you require to submit for the final winning solutions?
  • How would you handle Q&A and possible revisions during the competition?
  • To what extent have you explored this problem and what is the baseline solution?
  • How do you plan to promote the competition?

Proposals will be evaluated by a competition program committee based on:

• Relevance and Impact: The scientific or societal impact of the challenge, with a focus on originality and importance to the WWW community. Special consideration will be given to competitions that prioritize societal impact, fairness, and inclusivity.
• Evaluation Protocol: Clear and fair evaluation framework, with sufficient data for training/testing algorithms and accessible baseline methods for participants.
• Logistics: Feasibility of the schedule, plans for attracting participants, and organizer experience, especially in fostering diverse participation.

Accepted competitions will submit a 4-8 page paper for publication in the WWW 2025 Conference Proceedings, outlining the problem, dataset, evaluation criteria, and competition outcomes. Additionally, post-competition analysis papers can be submitted to future tracks at WWW to highlight long-term impact.

Competition winners will be invited to submit a detailed paper on their approach and results, which will be published in the Companion Proceedings. This offers participants an opportunity to share insights, challenges, and lessons learned from their competition solutions.

• Proposal Submission Deadline: Oct 20th, 2024
• Proposal Acceptance Notification: Oct 30th, 2024
• Competition Period: Nov 10th, 2024 – Feb 1st, 2025
• Notification to the Winners: Feb 3rd, 2025
• Paper Invitation: Fed 3rd, 2025
• Camera-Ready Submission: Feb 17th, 2025

All submission deadlines are end-of-day in the Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone.

• Prof. Amin Beheshti (Macquarie University, Australia)
• Dr. Shobeir Fakhraei (Amazon, USA)
• Prof. Rui Zhang (Tsinghua University, China)