Papers

Deadline: 8 September 2000

Papers present significant intellectual and technical contributions by researchers and practitioners to basic research, development, and practice in all areas of the field of human-computer interaction. Papers are presented at the CHI conference and are collected in an archival conference proceedings, which is published by ACM and cited and read by researchers, practitioners, and educators worldwide. A paper in the Conference Schedule can have wide impact on the study of HCI principles, theories, and techniques, and on their application to interactive systems practice. A Guide to Successful Papers Submissions is available. Mentoring for papers is also available for first-time authors. The deadline to request a Mentor is 9 June 2000.

Submission and Review Criteria
Paper submissions are reviewed rigorously by a large pool of volunteers drawn from the international technical community of HCI researchers and practitioners. The content and presentation of submitted papers must be acceptable as received. The review process attempts to ensure that papers are assessed rigorously and without bias by applying the same comprehensive set of criteria to every paper. Accordingly, all papers should be prepared with consideration of these criteria:

1. Contribution to the field of HCI and impact or benefit to the field. The contribution should be made clear in the abstract as well as the paper, outlining the direct significance to others in any area of the field of HCI. The contributions presented may be one of the following:

• a design for an interactive system that supports the needs of end users
• an interaction technique, device, or other component of the user interface
• a tool or implementation technique for use in interactive system design and development
• a methodology, technique, software architecture, programming technique, or development process for use in interactive system development; or findings from the study of its use
• a theory or model relevant to the design and development of an interactive system
• empirical findings, quantitative or qualitative, assisting the design and development of interactive systems, or concerning the validity of related theories
• experience gained in adapting designs and applying other HCI contributions to real-world conditions, presented in the form of a design briefing or case history
• guidelines or design heuristics that help achieve a design goal
• a thought-provoking, well substantiated analysis of an HCI-related issue

The paper should make clear how the contribution addresses a problem or question of importance to an identified audience in HCI. It should also make clear to what extent a solution or answer has been achieved and how the audience can thus benefit, now or in the future. A review of other published work related to the paper topic should be included. The paper should discuss the extent to which the benefits could be generalized beyond the context in which the work was done. Preference is given to one strong contribution rather than several lesser ones.

2. Evaluation or demonstration of the results. The paper should state its claims and then prove or demonstrate their validity with whatever means are appropriate to the domain. In many cases, a user study is the most effective way to do this. However, for a systems or software architecture paper, the proof may be in the implementation. For a new interaction mode, a proof-of-concept prototype or demonstration may be appropriate. More specifically, following Frederick Brooks' CHI'88 keynote address, a paper might report its evaluation data as:

• Findings, which are results properly established by soundly-designed experiments, and stated in terms of the domain for which generalization is valid.
• Observations, which are reports of facts of real user behavior, even those observed in under-controlled, limited-sample experiments.
• Rules of thumb, which are generalizations, even those unsupported by testing over the whole domain of generalization, believed by the investigators willing to attach their names to them.

The appropriate criteria for quality differ for these categories: truthfulness and rigor for findings; interestingness for observations; usefulness for rules of thumb; and freshness for all three. [F.P. Brooks, Proc. ACM CHI'88 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference, Addison-Wesley/ACM Press, pp. 1-11, 1988]

In all cases, it should be clear that the work has been carried out to a standard that permits HCI researchers and practitioners to take up the results with some confidence and that the work be replicable by others in the field. Attention should accordingly be paid to demonstrating that empirical work, whether quantitative or qualitative, has been carefully planned and carried out. Likewise, there should be sound and well-justified rationale for decisions taken during the design and development of systems, tools, techniques, and methods. The outcome of these decisions should be assessed in some way against the stated problem.

3. Originality of the work. The paper should explain how the presented work has built on previous contributions, and it should make clear in what ways it is novel compared to the state of the art.

4. Written Presentation. The paper's contribution and argument should be clearly and concisely presented, with appropriate use of figures, and with attention to the quality of writing. If you wish to request a mentor, see the description of the mentoring program in this booklet.

Review Process
Each paper will be reviewed by a group of four to six reviewers. The reviewing is blind, which means that reviewers do not know the identity of the authors of the papers. Reviewer assignment will be done by matching author-supplied keywords and other paper information against reviewer expertise. Based on the reviews, program committee members will develop a summary review and recommendation for acceptance or rejection. Final decisions will be made at a program committee meeting, where the committee as a whole will review the recommendations.

Format
Papers should be submitted electronically for reviewing; a final camera-ready version will be requested for those papers that are accepted.

Papers must be no longer than 8 pages including references, appendices, and figures. They must include title, author information, abstract, keywords, body, and references. The abstract must be 150 words or less and must clearly state the paper contribution to the field of HCI.

Color figures must be provided on separate pages at the end of the manuscript; these pages are included in the page count. Acceptance of a paper does not guarantee acceptance of a color figure.

The paper may be accompanied by a short video figure up to 2 minutes in length. The video figure will be reviewed along with the paper. Acceptance of a paper does not guarantee acceptance of a video figure.

Papers must be in the Conference Publications Format. To support the blind review process, you must prepare an anonymous version of the paper with author names and affiliations removed. It should be prepared as a PDF file and submitted electronically.

Submission Instructions
The paper should be submitted electronically, in PDF format, at the CHI 2001 Instructions for Electronic Submissions, by the Papers Deadline, 8 September 2000, 17:00 (5:00 p.m.), your local time. If you are submitting a video figure, see the checklist for how to submit your videotape.

Prepare your abstract and the PDF file of the anonymous version of your paper. Go to the CHI 2001 Instructions for Electronic Submissions and follow the instructions to submit the PDF file and enter the requested information, including author information, keywords, and abstract. The confidentiality of your submission will be maintained throughout the review process.

For reviewing, we will use your electronically-submitted PDF file. However, if we have problems handling the PDF file for your paper, we may contact you individually shortly after the deadline to work out the problems or possibly to request a backup hardcopy printout.

If you do not currently have software to make PDF files, you can obtain shareware software to do this (pstill, from http://www.this.net/~frank/pstill.html and others from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost) as well as commercial software (Adobe Acrobat, from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html).

If you do not have web access, please contact the Papers Co-chairs to arrange an alternative submission procedure.

Upon Acceptance
Authors will be notified of acceptance or rejection by shortly after the program committee meeting in November. Accepted Papers will be published in the CHI 2001 Conference Proceedings. The primary author of each accepted paper will receive an Author Kit with detailed instructions on how to submit the camera-ready copy. It is due by 8 December 2000. If your submission is accepted, it will not be published without copyright release forms signed by the first listed author or a representative of the first author's institution.

At the Conference
Presentations of papers are 30 minutes (a 20 minute talk and 10 minutes for questions).

Submissions

• Your submission must be in English.
• Submissions will not be accepted by fax or email.
• Submissions arriving after the deadline will not be considered.
• Your submission should contain no proprietary or confidential material and should cite no proprietary or confidential publications.
• Responsibility for permissions to use video, audio, or pictures of identifiable people rests with you, not CHI 2001.

Checklist
Please perform the activities in this checklist to ensure completeness in your submission.

• Read the Conference Overview, Submitting to CHI, and the Guide to Successful Papers Submission documents.
• If your paper submission contains a video figure, read the additional information on video submissions in this booklet for more information.
• If you wish to request a mentor, please see the description of the mentoring program, and contact the Mentoring Liaisons no later than 9 June 2000.
• Prepare your paper in the Conference Publications Format.
• Write the 150 word abstract, clearly stating the paperšs contribution to the field of HCI.
• Create a PDF file of an anonymous version of your paper.
• Test your PDF file by viewing or printing it with the same software we will use when we receive it, Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 4. This is widely used and obtainable at no cost from
  http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/ readermain.html.
• Go to the CHI 2001 Instructions for Electronic Submissions and follow the instructions to submit the PDF file and enter the requested information, including author information, keywords, and abstract.
• If your submission includes a video figure, prepare up to 2 minutes of video suitable for publication. To support the blind review process, the videotape must not contain affiliations or author information. If accepted, your final version should contain this information. When you make your electronic submission, be sure to check the box for an accompanying video figure, note your submission number on the videotape, and send the videotape, along with a printout of the submission summary page you obtained from the electronic submission web site, to arrive at the conference office by 8 September 2000, 17:00 (5:00 p.m. EDT) local time: CHI 2001 Conference Office 703 Giddings Avenue, Suite U-3 Annapolis, MD 21401.
• Be available shortly after the paper submission deadline in case we need to contact you, if we encounter any problems in handling your PDF file.

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