Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining

Like all flagship conferences, SIGKDD imposes a high requirement to present and publish submitted papers. The focus is on innovative research in data mining, knowledge discovery, and large-scale data analytics. Papers emphasizing theoretical foundations are particularly encouraged, as are novel modeling and algorithmic approaches to specific data mining problems in scientific, business, medical, and engineering applications. Visionary papers on new and emerging topics are particularly welcomed. Authors are explicitly discouraged from submitting papers that contain only incremental results or that do not provide significant advances over existing approaches.[8]

In 2014, over 2,600 authors from at least fourteen countries submitted over a thousand papers to the conference. A final 151 papers were accepted for presentation and publication, representing an acceptance rate of 14.6%.[9] This acceptance rate is slightly lower than those of other top computer science conferences, which typically have a rate of 15–25%.[10] The acceptance rate of a conference is only a proxy measure of its quality. For example, in the field of information retrieval, the WSDM conference has a lower acceptance rate than the higher-ranked SIGIR.[11]

Winning the ACM SIGKDD Best Paper Award (Best Research Track Paper) is widely considered an internationally recognized significant achievement in a researcher's career. Authors compete with established professionals in the field, such as tenured professors, executives, and eminent industry experts from top institutions. It is common to find press articles and news announcements from the awardees’ institutions and professional media to celebrate this achievement.[15][16]

This award recognizes innovative scholarly articles that advance the fundamental understanding of the field of knowledge discovery in data and data mining. Each year, the award is given to authors of the strongest paper by this criterion, selected by a rigorous process.[14]

The selection process follows multiple rounds of peer reviews under stringent criteria. The selection committee consists of leading experts who provide insightful and independent analysis on the merits and degree of innovation of the scholarly articles submitted by each author. The reviewers are required to be recognized subject experts who had extensive contributions to the specific subject area addressed by the paper. Reviewers are also required to be completely unaffiliated with the authors.

First, all papers submitted to the ACM SIGKDD conference are reviewed by research track program committee members. Each submitted paper is extensively reviewed by multiple committee members and detailed feedback is given to each author. After review, decisions are made by the committee members to accept or reject the paper based on the paper’s novelty, technical quality, potential impact, clarity, and whether the experimental methods and results are clear, well executed, and repeatable.[8] During the process, committee members also evaluate the merits of each paper based on above factors, and make decision on recommending candidates for Best Paper Award (Best Research Track Paper).

The candidates for Best Paper Award (Best Research Track Paper) are extensively reviewed by conference chairs and the best paper award committee. The final determination of the award is based on the level of advancement made by authors through the paper to the understanding of the field of knowledge discovery and data mining. Authors of a single paper who are judged to have contributed the highest level of advancement to the field are selected as recipients of this award. Anyone who submits a scholarly article to SIGKDD is considered for this award.

The ACM SIGKDD Best Paper Award (Best Research Track Paper) was given to 49 individuals between 1997 and 2014. Among these individuals, most are distinguished persons and established professionals with celebrated careers, who have made significant contributions to the field.

This only difference between "Best Student Paper Award" and "Best Paper Award (Best Research Track Paper)" is the limitation in competition.

All authors participating the conference are considered equally for "Best Paper Award (Best Research Track Paper)", and the award does not limit competition to any particular region, population, or age group.

However, "Best Student Paper Award" is limited to student authors only. "Best Student Paper Award" recognizes papers presented at the annual SIGKDD conference, with a student as a first author, that advance the fundamental understanding of the field of knowledge discovery in data and data mining.[14]