Monday, June 28 – Thursday, July 1, 2027, Sophia Antipolis, France
Centre Inria d’Université Côte d’Azur
The European Conference on Argumentation (ECA) is a biennial pan-European initiative aiming to consolidate and advance research on argumentation. After five successful editions, in Lisbon in 2015, Fribourg in 2017, Groningen in 2019, Rome in 2022 and Warsaw in 2025, ECA will be hosted in 2027 by the Inria Center of Université Côte d’Azur, in Sophia Antipolis, France. We aim to attract scholars on argumentation worldwide from various disciplines, dealing with a range of themes and adopting a variety of approaches.
Special topic — Argumentation in Scientific Discourse
The special theme of this conference is Argumentation in Scientific Discourse. The main objective of the conference is to identify the key research areas related to the role of argumentation in the production, communication, and critical evaluation of scientific knowledge. Science is inherently argumentative: from the construction of hypotheses and the interpretation of evidence to the peer review process and the public communication of research findings, argument is the lifeblood of scientific inquiry. Yet the norms, structures, and social dynamics of scientific argumentation remain incompletely understood and are today subject to unprecedented pressures.
The accelerating pace of scientific production, the rise of interdisciplinary research, and the increasing demand for science to inform urgent societal decisions — in areas such as public health, climate change, and artificial intelligence — place new and complex demands on the quality of scientific argumentation. At the same time, the boundaries between expert and public discourse are becoming increasingly porous. Scientific claims circulate beyond specialist communities, are contested in public arenas, and are appropriated by a wide range of actors with varying degrees of epistemic authority and argumentative competence. Phenomena such as science denialism, the misrepresentation of uncertainty, the strategic exploitation of dissent within scientific communities, and the erosion of trust in scientific institutions all point to the need for a deeper and more systematic understanding of how argument functions — and can fail — in scientific contexts.
Particularly noteworthy is the tension between the internal norms of scientific argumentation — such as the demand for empirical warrant, reproducibility, and peer scrutiny — and the rhetorical and dialectical pressures that shape how science is argued about in broader public and institutional settings. The replication crisis, debates over statistical inference, the role of values in scientific reasoning, and the growing presence of generative AI as both a tool and an agent in scientific communication all raise fundamental questions for argumentation theory. Hence there is a need to develop and refine the conceptual and methodological tools that argumentation research can offer to better understand, evaluate, and strengthen argumentative practice across the full spectrum of scientific discourse — from the laboratory notebook to the policy brief, from the journal article to the science podcast.
The conference aims to explore these topics and ensure a high-quality exchange of research results.
Submissions outside of the scope of the special theme Argumentation in Scientific Discourse are also accepted. We invite submissions from all sub-disciplines of argumentation, on all relevant topics, and employing a variety of methods and approaches. These may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- argumentative design
- argumentation schemes and patterns: analogy, practical argument, conduction, …
- argumentation in special contexts: finance, medicine, law, policy-making, academy, (social) media, …
- artificial arguers (generative AI)
- controversy and disagreement
- critical thinking
- dialogue logic, empirical logic, informal logic, …
- discourse analysis
- empirical research on argumentation
- fallacies
- normative pragmatics
- education and pedagogy
- philosophy of argument
- rhetoric and argumentation
- strategic manoeuvring
- virtues
- visual and multimodal argumentation
Abstract submission
1) Long paper, with a commentator
Submit an abstract of 1000 to 1500 words, ready for double-blind reviewing. Accepted papers are submitted before the conference (see “important dates” below) and are assigned a commentator. Authors receive presentation slots of 35 min. For publication purposes, long papers should not exceed 7000 words.
2) Regular paper, without a commentator
Submit a regular abstract of 300 to 500 words, ready for double-blind reviewing. Accepted regular papers are submitted after the conference, and no commentator will be assigned. Authors receive presentation slots of 25 min. For publication purposes, regular papers should not exceed 5000 words.
3) Thematic panel or symposium
Each thematic panel/symposium is expected to be related to the theme “Argumentation in Scientific Discourse”. Panels should allow presentations by 3 to 5 speakers with a total duration ranging from 90 to 150 minutes. Panels may include a panel respondent (panel organizer(s) or someone invited by the panel organizer(s)). Panel proposals are submitted by the panel organizer and should be prepared for double-blind review. Proposals shall include the following: a title, a description of the panel and its connection to the conference theme (300-500 words), the titles and abstracts of all contributions to the panel (300-500 words each) and the name of the respondent (if applicable). For publication purposes panel/symposium papers may not exceed 5000 words (incl. references and footnotes). Please note that all abstracts in the panel/symposium should also be individually submitted by their authors as ‘Regular papers’. When submitting these individual contributions, authors must include the sentence “My paper is part of the thematic panel/symposium…” followed by the title of the symposium at the very beginning of the paper abstract.
4) Poster
Submit a regular abstract (300 – 500 words) ready for double-blind reviewing. Posters will neither be assigned a commentator nor published. Posters shall be in printed format (A1 size).
Submission policy
- Only one paper as first author, except when the author also submits a panel contribution.
- Double-blind peer review for quality and relevance by the Scientific Committee.
Important dates
- Abstract submission deadline: 20 November 2026
- Notification of acceptance/rejection: 5 February 2027
- Submission of long papers to commentators: 15 March 2027
- Early-bird registration: 1 March 2027
- Final registration: 20 May 2027