The annual Web Science Trust (WST) Test of Time Award has been awarded to Lars Backstrom, Paolo Boldi, Marco Rosa, Johan Ugander and Sebastiano Vigna for their paper titled “Four degrees of separation”.
The authors are the fourth group of researchers to receive the WST Test of Time Award, which was announced during the closing ceremony of the 2025 ACM Web Science Conference in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.
The Chairs of this year’s conference, Dr. Matthew Weber and Dr. Katherine (Katya) Ognyanova, said:
This paper stood out not only for its foresight, but for its enduring relevance to the evolving challenges we face in Web Science. The authors tackle a key question of the changing nature of degrees of separation. This is an issue that has only grown in importance in recent years, and their findings continue to provide important guidance for scholars today. ”
The prize-winning paper was first presented at the 2012 ACM Web Science Conference in Evanston, USA and was selected by a WST Test of Time Award Committee chaired by Associate Professor Sophia Fu who explained what had impressed the judging panel:
This paper embodies the spirit of the Test of Time Award – it delivers a substantial advance with tangible, lasting impact. Its approach brought concrete data at scale to the exploration of social-network graph-distance computations, and has catalysed further research that continues to shape the field.”
Dame Wendy Hall, a Director of the Web Science Trust, who announced the winners during the ceremony, added:
The Web Science Trust is proud to recognise this work, which has not only stood the test of time but has also helped redefine how we think about connections on a global scale in the context of the Web’s unique structures.”
The authors commented:
“We are honoured to receive this award. Our work aimed to update previous assumptions about social networks and bring our understanding up to date based on significant real-word social network data. We’re delighted to see its continued relevance today. We thank the Web Science Trust for this recognition and for fostering a community that supports long-term innovation in the field.”
