Quick Facts about Papers

CHI Papers are archival publications of original research in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI).

Important Changes

• Submission format: Please use the appropriate template, available for both LaTeX and Word (Windows and Mac). Note that for CHI 2021, we will be using the ACM submission process.
• Subcommittees: Every year, the makeup of subcommittees changes as the field shifts and volumes of submissions change: some earlier committees have had a reduction in scope, while others have expanded. Please carefully review the CFP and linked documents to ensure you select up to two appropriate subcommittees for your submission. Please also note that CHI2021 has two new subcommittees this year which are described, along with all the others, on the selecting a subcommittee page.
• Presentation length: at the conference, presentations of accepted papers will be 5 minute pre-recorded videos, followed by 5 minutes Q and A.

Important Dates

• Abstract deadline (title, abstract, authors, subcommittee choices, and other metadata.): Thursday September 10th, 2020 (12pm (noon) PDT / 3pm EDT/ 8pm BST)
• Submission deadline: Thursday September 17th, 2020 (12pm (noon) PDT / 3pm EDT / 8pm BST)
• Reviews sent to authors: November 19th, 2020 (12pm (noon) PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT)
• Rebuttal period closes: November 25, 2020 (12pm (noon) PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT)
• Decision notification: December 12th, 2020 (12pm (noon) PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT)
• Decision notification: December 12th, 2020 (EOD PST)
• Reviews released: December 15th, 2020 (12pm (noon) PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT)
• Shepherd ready deadline: December 29th, 2020 (12pm (noon) PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT)
• Publication-ready deadline: January 12th, 2021 (12pm (noon) PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT)
• Video previews deadline (optional): January 22nd, 2021 (12pm (noon) PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT)
• Paper presentation pre-recorded videos: April 7th, 2021

Submission Details:

• Online Submission: Made to Precision Conference
• Submission format: anonymized, no page limit, but the longer the paper, the greater the required contribution, a maximum 150-word abstract, based on the appropriate template.
• Anonymization: Please ensure that your submission conforms to the Anonymization Policy. Consistent with CHI 2020, papers that violate the anonymization rule will be desk-rejected, so please carefully check your paper and supplementary material on PCS before final submission.

Selection process: Formally reviewed.

Archives: Papers are archived in the conference proceedings, available on the ACM Digital Library.

Message from the CHI Papers Chairs

CHI Papers are publications of original research in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). They represent mature, complete research. CHI Papers are read and cited worldwide, and have a broad impact on the development of HCI theory, method, and practice.

Authors must present accepted Papers at the CHI Conference. Accepted manuscripts appear in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, which appears in the ACM Digital Library. The ACM Digital Library includes a mechanism to enable authors to provide perpetual free public access to their papers.

Accepted Papers may come from any arena of HCI activity: academia or industry; science, engineering, or craft; analysis or design. Acceptance is highly competitive: all accepted Papers will score highly on originality, significance, validity, and presentation quality. We are looking forward to seeing your best work!

Steven Drucker, Microsoft Research, USA

Pernille Bjørn, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Email: papers@chi2021.acm.org

Preparing and Submitting Your Paper

Step 1.

Write and format your paper. Your submission must be original; it cannot be published or under concurrent review elsewhere. If you make multiple submissions to CHI 2021 Papers, they should be distinct from each other. Papers do not have a page limit, but paper length should be commensurate with their contribution (see below).

A word about paper length. It should be noted that, in the past, authors were often encouraged to submit a maximum-length paper of up to 10 pages. For CHI 2021, authors are encouraged to submit a paper of length proportional to its contribution and thus there are no arbitrary maximum (or minimum) length papers, however clarity of writing is considered vital to a high-quality submission.

If your research contribution requires only 6, 8, or 12 pages (single column) (plus references), please submit a paper of that length. Reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a submission relative to its length. Papers should be succinct, but thorough in presenting the work. Typical papers will be 8 to 10 pages (double column) or 13-16 (single column) long (plus references) but papers can be shorter (e.g. 6-8 pages) if the contribution is smaller. Shorter, more focused papers are encouraged and will be reviewed like any other paper. Papers whose lengths are incommensurate with their contributions will be rejected. Papers may be perceived as too long if they are repetitive or verbose, or too short if they omit important details, neglect relevant prior art, or tamper with formatting rules to save on page count.

Have a look at the example papers to get a sense of page length and contribution, especially since we are shifting to a new submission format this year. Typical lengths are between 8 and 10 pages (double column) or 13 and 16 (single column) pages.

Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission.

Useful links:

• ACM SIGCHI Proceedings Format
• Guide to a Successful Paper Submission
• Guide to an Accessible Submission
• CHI Anonymisation Policy
• Guide to Reviewing CHI Papers
• SIGCHI Submitter Agreement

Step 2.

Prepare supplementary material (optional). Your submission may be accompanied by a short video or by other supplementary material.  Video figures do not have a specified limit for the duration, although we recommend staying within 5 minutes. Other supplementary material may include, for example, survey text, experimental protocols, source code, and data, all of which can help with replicability of your work. Any non-video supplementary material should be submitted as a single .zip file, including a README file with a description of the materials. Because not everyone who reads the paper will view the supplementary material, your submission must stand on its own and will be reviewed as such. All supplementary material must be anonymized. None-anonymized submissions or material will be desk rejected.

In instances where your new submission builds directly on a project described in another, as-yet unpublished paper, it is recommended that you submit an anonymised version of that other paper as supplementary material. You may choose to also include a note of explanation as to the novel contribution of the present submission. If the previous work is already published, it may simply be cited in the body of the paper as per usual, and should not be included in the supplementary materials.

Also see:

• Guide to Submitting a Video as Supplemental Material

Step 3.

Select a subcommittee. CHI receives over 3,000 Papers submissions. In order to provide high-quality reviews by experts for all submissions, the CHI program committee is divided into topical subcommittees. When you submit a paper, you will state a preference of two subcommittees whose mandates you believe your topic fits into. It is your responsibility to select the subcommittees that offer the best expertise to assess your research, and that you believe will most fully appreciate your contribution. If you are unsure, you can email the subcommittee chairs for advice. The program committee may re-assign submissions to a different subcommittee if neither of the subcommittees selected by the authors possesses adequate expertise in the submission’s topic.

Step 4.

Make your submission. Authors may submit and resubmit their materials to Precision Conference before the submission deadline. For CHI 2020, we will have a two-step submission process with two important deadlines:

• Abstract Deadline: Authors must submit their title, abstract (150 word max), list of authors, subcommittee selections, and other metadata before this deadline. After this deadline, Precision Conference will only allow the contact author to edit his/her submission files, and will not allow modification to the submission’s metadata including the list of authors associated with the paper. No new submissions will be allowed after this deadline.
• Submission Deadline: All materials – the paper submission itself, the video figure, and any other supplementary material  – must be submitted before this deadline. No extensions will be granted. Only papers that fulfilled the Abstract Deadline requirements can be uploaded.
• Note that, unlike some other ACM conferences with two-deadline processes, you will be free to edit the content of your paper and other uploaded files up to the submission deadline. However, you will not be able to modify the metadata after this deadline (title, abstract, authors, subcommittee selections, etc.) Changes to the title and abstract can be made once papers have been accepted for publication.
• The submission system will open for submissions approximately four weeks before the Abstract submission deadline.

Details on the review process itself are described in the Papers Review Process.

Interactivity for Papers

We encourage authors of papers submissions to also participate in Interactivity (previously Demonstrations). This is most applicable to papers that describe interactive technologies or experiences and allows authors to present a hands-on demonstration of their research in a high-visibility, high-impact forum. Authors of papers who wish to participate in Interactivity are required to prepare a separate, non-anonymised submission for the Interactivity track. There will be no formal association between submissions to Interactivity and their associated paper. The content of the submission can be adapted from the existing paper.

Upon Acceptance of Your Paper

Authors will be notified of conditional acceptance or rejection on the Decision Notification Date. At this point, contact authors of conditionally accepted papers will receive instructions on how to prepare and submit a final version by the Publication-Ready Deadline. The publication-ready version has to follow the new LaTeX and Word templates from ACM. All authors are strongly encouraged to use the instructions for accessible pdfs to add accessibility to your final generated pdf. For LaTeX users: please make sure you only import allowed packages, found here. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: acmtexsupport@aptaracorp.com and they will respond within 24 hours. For conditionally accepted papers where a shepherd has been provided, contact authors will receive additional information on how to work with their shepherd to make appropriate changes. These shepherded changes must be made by the Shepherd Ready Deadline, in order to allow appropriate time for shepherds and authors to agree on the final changes before the Publication-Ready Deadline. A member of the program committee will check that the final version meets the requirements for publication and, if so, will finalise the acceptance. Authors are encouraged to submit their revision earlier than the Publication-ready deadline, in case it is judged that the paper does not meet the committee requirements. If the authors are unable to meet these requirements by the Publication-ready deadline, the Papers Chairs will be notified and may be required to remove the paper from the program.

The publication-ready version has to follow the new LaTeX and Word templates from ACM. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: acmtexsupport@aptaracorp.com and they will respond within 24 hours.

Authors will be asked to submit a 30-second video preview summarizing the paper; this is optional, but highly encouraged, as it will increase the visibility of your paper before, at the conference, and in the ACM digital library in perpetuity.

Authors will also be required to assign either copyright or license to the ACM or to pay a fee to ACM for Open Access (details about ACM rights management: http://authors.acm.org, and about the ACM authorizer service: http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service). Obtaining permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people or proprietary content rests with the author, not the ACM or the CHI conference.

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date may affect the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.)

Your Paper at the Conference

Authors are required to present their work in a scheduled session with other CHI Papers. Paper authors will be allowed up to 10 minutes total (5 minute pre-recorded video with 5 minutes of live Q&A) to present their work. Papers whose authors are not at the conference to present their paper may be removed from the ACM Digital Library.

See also:

• Guide to a Successful Presentation

The Guide to a Successful Presentation describes the computing and audiovisual (A/V) equipment provided by the conference and gives tips on preparing and giving a good CHI talk.

Your Paper after the Conference

Accepted Papers will be distributed in the CHI Conference Proceedings available in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide. Video figures of accepted Papers will be archived on the ACM Digital Library.