The CHI 97 Review Process

The members of the CHI Technical Program Committee each year work hard to develop a program that is of high quality and reflects the latest innovations in HCI research and practice. One of the most important aspects of developing a Technical Program is running a fair and comprehensive review process. We are constantly seeking to refine this process and welcome your comments.

The Conference Proceedings

Each year the CHI Conference produces an archival Proceedings whose contents are cited and read by researchers, practitioners and educators world wide. Given the prominence of this volume, we believe it critical that its contents be very carefully reviewed from the perspective of scientific progress and cumulation in the field. For CHI 97, the Proceedings will contain Papers, Technical Notes and Design Briefings.

Submissions in these categories are sent out to a broad range of HCI experts, with reviewer assignments based on matching phrases provided by authors and reviewers (see the review form filled out by volunteers). Each submission typically is reviewed by at least 4-5 experts, with extensive written feedback provided along with overall quality and significance ratings. Submissions that are of particular interest to reviewers, or that are controversial and require more discussion, may receive as many as 10 reviews. This year for the first time we will be using a blind review process -- i.e., the primary reviewers of a paper will not know the identity of the submitting author or institution. We also follow a well-specified procedure for dealing with submissions by committee members.

CHI receives many submissions in many categories (e.g., there are typically about 250 papers submitted); the various review processes may thus involve as many as 400-500 experts. We are very happy with this level of involvement by the community, as it ensures more balanced reviewing as well as providing a sort of informal sharing of work in progress (e.g., even those papers that are not accepted are read and critiqued by other experts).

In addition to working with reviewers, the Co-Chairs for Papers, Technical Notes and Design Briefings normally also work with a team of Associate Chairs. The job of an Associate Chair is to collate review information for particular submissions and then to write a synthetic "meta" review, which makes a recommendation and provides supporting rationale. In some cases, Associate Chairs may then meet with the Co-Chairs to make final decisions about each paper.

The Conference Extended Abstracts

The Technical Program of the CHI Conference includes much more than Papers, Technical Notes and Design Briefings, and the Extended Abstracts volume is the repository of all other contributions. Many of these contributions are informal in nature - for example, Posters, Demonstrations, Workshops - but we feel it is important to provide a record of these conference activities for the CHI community. Submissions in these categories are also reviewed carefully, but more from the perspective of their ability to promote discussion, interaction and exchange at the conference, rather than as an archival record of a research or practice contribution.

Category-Specific Review Information

For more detail on review process or criteria for each submission category, please browse the category-specific documents: