This special issue of JCSCW is a collection of the long papers presented at ECSCW 2018, the 16th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: The International Venue on Practice-centred Computing and the Design of Cooperation Technologies, held in the period 4–8 June 2018 in Nancy, France. ECSCW is a series of international conferences on computer-supported cooperative work located in Europe and championed by EUSSET, the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies.

Since its inception, ECSCW has been a biennial conference held in a European city in the fall of each year. In 2018, the ECSCW conference went annual by merging with the COOP conference. This transformation was driven by the EUSSET steering committee, but the decision was taken by the involved ECSCW steering committees. The change also caused the conference to move to spring - leaving only a 10-month separation from the last ECSCW. Given this little time between the conferences, caused by the transition, we were afraid of a potential drop in submissions. However, this was not the case. The conference received 60 long paper submissions, which is an increase from 52 submissions in 2017.

In 2017, ECSCW partnered with the CSCW Journal, publishing the longer papers in the journal. This partnership has continued in 2018. This special issue is a selection of the long papers submitted to the conference between September and November 2017 in two rounds. All submissions were reviewed by the ECSCW program committee (PC), which comprised 51 members, and some external reviewers. Each paper in this special issue has underground a two-round journal-level review process for ensuring original, rich, and in-depth contributions to CSCW. Decisions were made by the Program co-chairs (the guest editors of this special issue) in collaboration with the Journal’s Editor-In-Chief.

Among the 60 submitted papers, after a first review cycle, we invited 33 for a revision. Among the 30 revised papers received, after a second corrections-confirmation review cycle, 21 papers were ultimately accepted. These papers represent a wide range of CSCW topics and concerns. While the papers continue the tradition of in-depth studies of human practices mediated by digital interactive technologies, we also wanted to be inclusive of new topics relevant for the ECSCW community in accordance with the traditions of the former COOP conference.

The papers address creation and/or evaluation of collaboration technologies, practices for making effective use of these technologies, and studies of the use of these technologies in various settings. The technologies covered include social media, video sharing systems, digital notes, and recommendation systems. Some of the practices covered are didactic, persuasive and sociomaterial. The topics of the studies range over a wide spectrum including software engineering, knowledge, home, workplace, healthcare and social interaction. The quantitative and qualitative studies use a wide range of data including manual observations, interaction logs, and audio and video recordings. We believe that our inclusive selection of papers will spur interesting, critical, and thought provoking conversations, which can drive the CSCW research field forward.

We wish to acknowledge the contributions of all the members of the ECSCW 2018 Programme Committee and the external reviewers who have worked so admirably under a tight time frame. We also acknowledge the support and advice of the Journal of CSCW Editor-In-Chief Kjeld Schmidt and of the CSCW Journal Editorial Office, including Lester de Leon. We thank all the active participants of the ECSCW community who helped prepare an excellent conference program. We could not have done this without you!