Author responsibilities

  1. As an author you should realise that the W4A conference is a mid-level conference on the raise. We are a community based conference with an average acceptance rate of 38% with ACM Bibliometrics of publication years 2004-2012; Submitted publications: 195; Accepted ones: 74; Cumulative acceptance rate: 38%. For W4A 2012: Submissions: 23; accepted: 7; acceptance rate: 30%.

    This makes us the top Web Accessibility focused conference. This is because we are very rigourous in review and only accept high quality technical work. We wish to encourage innovative and novel new work – and would expect that work published with the W4A will be some of the first work you disseminate. In addition, we would like to accept high quality evolutive work, or work with a substantial incremental addition of novelty.

  2. Your work does not have to be ‘end-to-end’ such as the kind you may find in the Web Conference, or as a Journal Publication, but it must be a quality piece of science, which makes a contribution to the field.
  3. You may find it helpful to understand how we will review your work by reading Mark Bernstein’s excellent ‘Reviewing Conference Papers’. In addition, if not done yet, you should familiarise yourself with our submission policy so that you can make your papers as high a quality as possible. The following aspects of the submissions policy my help you prepare:
    • Papers will not be blinded – In this way we encourage a degree of self-policing: submissions are not blinded, therefore submitting immature work, to be read by a programme committee populated by the field’s top researchers, will tarnish your reputation.
    • All authors will have a chance to respond to the reviewers comments; and these responses will be taken into account in the programme chairs acceptance / rejection process;
    • Inter-reviewer discussions are encouraged (this is an Advocate decision). However, the program committee should read all the submissions, debating each acceptance decision (and many rejections) as a group.
    • Very high technical quality, or thought provoking work in the case of a communication, are the only selection criteria, however; we strive for a 30% or less acceptance rate in the technical track.