It is very important to CHI Conference Committees that all members of the community feel they have an equal chance to have technical submissions accepted onto the Technical Program. Questions are often raised when a member of the Technical Program Committee submits a paper, panel, etc. for consideration. How do we make sure such contributions are reviewed fairly?

For CHI 97, some of this is addressed by our experiment with blind reviews for Papers, Technical Notes and Design Briefings (the categories making up the archival Proceedings). That is, the primary reviewers of these submissions will not know the identity of the submitting author.

A more specific issue concerns submissions authored by the Technical Area Co-Chairs or Associate Chairs (or by colleagues at their institution). For such submissions, we take the following precautions:

• If the contribution is submitted by an Associate Chair, it is handled as usual by another Associate Chair, but with the author unaware of the assignment.
• If the contribution is submitted by a Chair, it is handled by the Co-Chair if there is one. If not, one of the Technical Program Co-Chairs serves as an ad hoc Associate Chair.
• Chairs or Associate Chairs are excused from discussion of any contribution authored by them or someone from their institution.
• If a contribution authored by a member of the Technical Program Committee (i.e., Co-Chairs of the Technical Areas) is recommended for acceptance, the Technical Program Co-Chairs will review the decisions prior to final acceptance.