Note on Selection Processes

The CHI conference employs different selection processes to apply appropriate quality assurance for each type of content that appears in the CHI Technical Program. The different selection processes and respective publication categories provide different allowances for republication of that content in other contexts. The different selection processes also provide different levels of review feedback. The CHI processes are consistent with the ACM policy on Categories of publications as described in the ACM Policy on Pre-Publication Evaluation.

Selection Processes at CHI

Refereed content is rigorously reviewed by members of the program committee and peer experts. Papers belong to this selection process category.
- Submitted papers shall be reviewed by four qualified, independent reviewers who are asked to assess the originality, correctness, novelty, importance, and clarity of exposition of the paper.
- In cases where reviewer comments suggest that a paper may be acceptable only with major revisions, the author(s) shall have an opportunity to submit a revised paper. Final submissions after revisions will be re-reviewed by the 1AC (2AC and external reviewers may review as well if needed). Re-submissions through the Revise and Resubmit process will be reviewed by independent reviewers, generally to include the reviewers who originally considered the paper not acceptable in its original form. Due to the limited time frame for CHI’s review process, there is only a single round of Revise and Resubmit.
- Following ACM’s policy on Pre-Publication Evaluation, our review process includes desk reject and quick reject. In such cases, external reviewers will not be invited. For more details about our desk/quick reject, please refer to Papers Review Process.
Juried content is reviewed by a committee but in a less rigorous process than refereed and does not include an author’s response or conditional acceptance. Juried content is generally not required to make the same level of lasting and significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding as refereed content. Authors who submit to juried tracks may expect to receive light feedback of up to a few paragraphs in length. The following tracks contain juried content: Late-Breaking Work, Case Studies, alt.chi, Workshops/Symposia, Student Game Competition, Student Design Competition, and Student Research Competition.
Curated content is highly selective but does not necessarily follow a reviewing process by a committee. Curated content may be selected from submissions or invited by the track chairs. Authors who submit to curated tracks should not expect to receive formal feedback on their submission other than the selection decision. The following tracks contain curated content: Special Interest Groups, Interactivity, Courses, Doctoral Consortium, Panels, and Journals (invitation only).

Republishability of Contributions

Refereed content is published in the main conference proceedings which is part of the Human Computer Interaction Archive and appears in the ACM Digital Library. Authors must assign copyright of the content or assign an exclusive license to distribute to ACM, which restricts reuse of the content according to the ACM Copyright Policy. Authors do retain some rights for reuse of the material. Alternatively, authors may pay an upfront fee to ACM for Open Access.

Juried and Curated content represent CHI’s Extended Abstracts and are published in the CHI Extended Abstracts which is a semi-archival, widely disseminated publication that appears in the ACM Digital Library. Copyright of content in the Extended Abstracts is typically retained by the authors, not assigned to the ACM. Authors may republish the material outside of the ACM except where otherwise noted (see ACM Author Rights).

For ACM conferences, including CHI, material that has been published in a semi-archival, widely disseminated publication such as the CHI Extended Abstracts, should not be republished unless the work has been “significantly” revised. Guidelines for determining “significance” of a revision are stated in the ACM Policy on Pre-Publication Evaluation and the ACM Policy on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions. Roughly, a significant revision would contain at least 25% unpublished material and significantly amplify or clarify the original material. These are subjective measures left to the interpretation of the reviewers and committee members – authors are wise to revise well beyond the Policy guidelines. Whenever submitting material that has partially appeared in a widely disseminated publication, it is good practice to cite the prior publication in accordance with the ACM’s Plagiarism Policy and explicitly state the differences between the new and prior material.