“ECSCW – The EUSSET Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work” is a series of conferences on computer-supported cooperative work organised in Europe. The conference is known to be the International venue on practice-centred computing and the design of cooperative and collaborative technologies. From 1989 to 2017 ECSCW took place bi-annually in different towns in Europe (see below). From 2018 and onwards, ECSCW merged with COOP and become an annual conference held in late May/early June under the aegis of EUSSET – The European Society for Socially-Embedded Technologies. Until 2025 the conference was called “The European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work”. In 2025 the conference was renamed to highlight its international nature.

To learn about the history of ECSCW, have a look at the introduction from the Conference Chair to the first ECSCW in 1989.

As stated in the preface to the ECSCW 1991 proceedings, CSCW is committed to grounding technological development and systems design in an understanding of “the specifics of practical, situated action“. ECSCW remains committed to this program.

ECSCW has been instrumental in defining the agenda of CSCW research since the beginning, and it still is. It has been the key forum for identifying and exploring issues such as

  • the situated nature of action and interaction and its implications;
  • the role of ethnography in CSCW and in computing in general,
  • the role and nature of ‘awareness’ in cooperative work;
  • the role of paper-based and other material artifacts in cooperative work;
  • highly flexible collaboration infrastructures and tailorable systems.

The ECSCW conferences are single-track conferences in order to facilitate critical discussion across the disciplinary and national subdivisions of the field.

Currently, ECSCW considers three kinds of work being presented at the main technical tracks of the conference:

  • “Exploratory Papers” report on smaller, focused studies, works-in-progress, or design probes, based on provocative ideas that explore a topic in new and possibly multiple ways. These contributions are published in the EUSSET Digital Library, with a DOI.
  • “Conference Papers” refer to papers making a specific, explicit contribution on their own but not as deep or broad as the ones expected from journal contributions. These papers are published in the EUSSET Digital Library, with a DOI.
  • “Journal Papers” are full length contributions, with deep and elaborated conceptual or theoretical contributions.  published as ECSCW contributions in the CSCW Journal.

For a detailed information on the journal publication process, see this page.

See https://www.facebook.com/ECSCW/ for the conference series Facebook page.

To provide a feeling for the (potential) impact of the different kinds of papers, we have collected some download statistics over the last years – the statistics are downloads per year (excluding downloads by robots) in average over all the papers:

ECSCW exploratory papers: For ECSCW2019 we had an average of 136 downloads/paper/year in the first year, for ECSCW2018 we had an average of 168 downloads/paper/year over two years and for ECSCW2017 we had an average of 83 downloads/paper/year over three years.
Regarding citation counts one could find on Google Scholar an average of 1 citation for ECSCW2019 exploratory papers after one year (max: 6), and an average of 5 citations for ECSCW2018 exploratory papers after two years (max: 12).

ECSCW journal papers: For the preprints stored in the EUSSET DL we had an average of 64 downloads/paper/year for ECSCW2019 and an average of 61 downloads/paper/year over two years for ECSCW2018.

To set these numbers in context: In the ACM Digital Library you can find average downloads for C&T of about 90/paper/year, and for ACM CSCW and ACM GROUP of about 100/paper/year.

Call for proposals to host ECSCW

We wish to invite the community to prepare proposals to host ECSCW in future years at European locations.

Expected duties of the ECSCW general chair(s) include: overseeing the overall organisation of the event; putting in place local arrangements for the conference and pre-conference events (booking rooms, catering, registration desk, etc.); assembling an organising committee (in consultation with the EUSSET steering group); liaising with the chairs of specific submission venues and with the members of the organising committee; budgeting and monitoring the financial status of the conference; helping in promoting the conference in collaboration with the other committee members and with EUSSET.

Proposals to host the ECSCW conference should include:

  • Which year the proposal refers to
  • A brief description of the proposed host organization;
  • Committee plans: the general co-chair(s) must be specified and described through short biographical sketches.
  • Additional information on suggested scientific chairs is welcome, if available;
  • Description of the proposed venue: Describe the conference location and facilities, as well as availability of accommodation options, travel infrastructure, location attractions and potential social/leisure activities;
  • Any other relevant issues: for example, any proposed innovations, additional information on venue/location, link to other events/activities organised by the proposed hosts, etc.

… and be sent to the chairman of the EUSSET steering committee – see Contact Information.

Proceedings

The proceedings of the ECSCW conferences are available in the EUSSET Digital Library.

Past and future conferences

EUSSET News related to ECSCW

  • ECSCW 2023: Sunny Days in Trondheim
    By: Babak Farshchian and Elena Parmiggiani We prayed for sunny days in Trondheim during June 5-9, 2023, when we welcomed more than one hundred participants to the 21th European conference on CSCW. We got some sunny days, both weather-wise and professionally. We hosted four workshops, one masterclass, and a doctoral colloquium during the first two days ...
  • Call for Proposals to Host ECSCW 2022, 2023, and 2024
    We wish to invite the community to prepare proposals to host ECSCW 2022, 2023 and 2024 at European locations. “ECSCW – The International conference on Practice-centred computing and the Design of cooperation technologies” is a series of conferences on computer-supported cooperative work located in Europe. It is an annual conference held in late May/early June under the aegis of EUSSET – ...
  • ECSCW 2021: Extended Deadlines for various formats
    The deadlines for the submission for the 19th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Works (ECSCW) have been extended. February 5, 2021: Workshops and Masterclasses February 22, 2021: Exploratory Papers February 22, 2021: Notes February 22, 2021: Doctoral Colloquium February 22, 2021: Posters and Demos Please, consult the conference webpage for further information: https://ecscw.eusset.eu/2021/submission/ The organizers are carefully observing ...
  • ECSCW 2021 in Zürich
    The European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work is an international venue on practice-centred computing and the design of cooperation technologies. It is a series of conferences on computer-supported cooperative work located in Europe that was established in 1989. The 19th edition of ECSCW will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, from 7th to 11th June 2021.  See ...
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