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This guide describes the format, deadlines and other relevant information for
submissions to UIST 2011. Authors submitting material to
UIST 2011 should use this guide to discover how the review process works, and hence how to write more
successful submissions.
UIST features papers, demos, and posters, as
described in the Call for Participation. While the material in this
guide is primarily oriented towards paper authors, its
general emphasis on quality and stringent review is also applicable to
authors of demo and poster submissions. Accepted papers
will be presented during three days of technical sessions at the
conference and published in the conference proceedings.
Paper submissions must not have been published previously in English. A paper is considered to have been previously published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal or meeting proceedings that is reliably and permanently available afterward in print or electronic form to non-attendees. This includes papers that are reviewed only as abstracts, but are published as a complete paper.
English is considered the international language of ACM SIGCHI and its journals and conferences. Work that has previously been presented or published in a language other than English may be translated and presented or published in English in SIGCHI journals and conferences insofar as ACM SIGCHI is concerned. The original author should typically also be the author (or co-author) of work translated into English and it should be made clear that this is a translation. We encourage authors whose work was originally published in languages other than English to do this if they feel their work is of sufficient relevance and quality to be useful to a wider international audience. We encourage conference technical chairs and journal editors to make it clear that papers which are otherwise acceptable should not be rejected on the basis that they have previously been published in a language other than English. In some cases, work originally published for a very select regional audience may be improved by rewriting (as well as translating) so that the relevance to a wider audience is clarified. Of course, it is not acceptable to translate the original work of another author and present it as one’s own. Authors wishing to publish in English a work originally published elsewhere also need to check their original copyright agreement with the original publisher to make sure that this is permissible according to that agreement.
UIST sees significant value in sharing early work through posters,demos, and informal venues. Indeed, UIST strongly encourages the submission of exciting, early research as a UIST poster or demo. Sharing preliminary research through these short, lightly reviewed work-in-progress or extended-abstract venues does not inhibit subsequent publication at UIST - provided that the UIST submission makes a contribution beyond (i.e., provides more or newer information than) the previous, shorter document. Non peer-reviewed documents such as theses and tech reports are not considered prior publications, and thus do not preclude submission of a paper on the same topic by the same authors. Prior work should of course be referenced appropriately. UIST authors are welcome to post information and videos about their work online while submissions are under review; sharing research online does not constitute prior publication or otherwise affect the UIST review process.
A paper identical or substantially similar (or even a subset or superset) in content to one submitted to UIST should not be simultaneously under consideration at another conference or journal during the entire duration of the UIST review process (i.e.,
from the submission deadline until the notification of decisions are emailed to authors). This restriction applies even if the overlap in review timelines between UIST and another venue is just a few days or a few hours, and even if it is your intention to withdraw the submission from the other venues as soon as it is accepted by one of them. This restriction also applies even if the other venue allows simultaneous submission. We will make every effort to identify simultaneous
submissions, and UIST reviewers are often familiar with the papers under review at other related conferences and journals; as such, submissions that are substantially similar run the risk of being rejected by UIST and the other venues on grounds of duplication alone.
You are encouraged to submit a revised and extended version of
your UIST paper to a journal such as ACM Transactions on Computer-Human
Interaction or Human-Computer Interaction after it has been presented
at the conference.
Paper submissions are anonymous.
What does anonymous mean for UIST submissions?
Primarily — as with CHI — it
means that submissions *must* remove all author and institutional
information from the title and header area of the first page of the
paper. Submissions that do not do so will be rejected without review.
Furthermore, all references must remain intact. If you previously
published a paper and your current submission builds on that work, the
reference — with authors — must appear in the references.
Submission with blank references (e.g., "12. REMOVED FOR REVIEWING")
will be rejected without review.
We encourage authors to refer to their previous work in the third
person. Further suppression of identity in the body of the paper,
while encouraged, is left to the authors' discretion.
Why did UIST adopt this particular strategy of lightweight
anonymization?
UIST has a long tradition of excellent, thoughtful reviewing. This policy seeks to balance two goals. The first goal is to emphasize for all parties involved that reviews assess the content of a submission, not its authors. This is why names must be omitted from the masthead. The second goal is to encourage papers that clearly
explain the research. Sometimes doing so requires (at least implicitly) disclosing information about the authors or an institution. This is why anonymization within the body of the paper is encouraged, but at the authors' discretion.
If you have comments or questions about this policy, please email
papers@uist2011.org.
Submissions to the Posters, Demos, and Doctoral Symposium track will be non-anonymous, as in previous years.
The Papers Committee and a set of external reviewers, both consisting of recognized experts, will review submitted papers. Then, at their meeting (June 17-18 2011.), the committee will select those papers to be presented at UIST 2011.
For 2011 the Committee will using the following process:
In the week following the submission deadline, the Papers Chairs will assign each submitted paper to a primary reviewer who is a member of the paper committee. Papers that are inappropriate may be rejected during this assignment process, without being sent to a primary reviewer. Papers will normally be rejected at this stage only if they are clearly off-topic for UIST 2011, or if they are discovered to have been published previously or to have been submitted simultaneously to another conference or journal. The primary reviewers may, upon conferring with the Technical
Papers Chairs, recommend a paper to be rejected without additional
review. A paper will normally be rejected at this stage only if it
falls into one of the categories listed in phase one, but this fact
was not detected during the initial paper assignment. It is possible,
although unlikely, that a paper may also be rejected at this stage if
it solves a problem that is known to be already solved; or if it does
not cite (and the authors seem unaware of) important prior work on the
same problem and doesn't address how it is different; or if it has no
evaluation via proof, experiment, or analysis; or if it is solving a
problem sufficiently minor that the senior reviewers do not believe
that it belongs in the program; or if it addresses a topic that is
clearly outside the purview of UIST. The primary reviewers distribute each paper to two additional
experts, called tertiary reviewers. The primary and tertiary
reviewers all write full reviews. Thus, at least three reviews are
written for each paper that has not been rejected during phases one
and two. The primary reviewer knows the identities of the authors of
the papers, but the tertiary reviewers do not. After the primary and tertiary reviewers complete their reviews, any paper for which all three reviews fall below a rejection threshold will be rejected. These rejected papers will not have a rebuttal or be discussed at the PC meeting. All other papers will be given to a secondary reviewer on the program committee who will write a fourth review for the paper. After all four reviews are complete, reviews will be distributed to authors. Authors of papers that have not been rejected will have 5 days to submit a rebuttal if they feel that the reviewers have made substantive errors, or to answer specific questions posed by the reviewers. The rebuttal is confined to 4000 characters in length, and it must be self-contained. For instance, URLs to additional material are not allowed. The rebuttal period is for addressing factual errors in the reviews, not for getting revised text or new results into the review process. Any such novel material will be ignored by the senior reviewers. Between the end of the rebuttal submission and committee meeting, the primary and secondary reviewers will read the author rebuttals, confer intensively about the paper, and prepare by June 17, 2011 a recommendation for the committee meeting. The two tertiary reviewers will see the author rebuttals and will participate in discussion of the paper. Since the tertiary reviewers do not know the names of the authors, the authors should maintain anonymity in their rebuttals. In addition, the tertiary reviewers don't know each other's identities, so they too must maintain anonymity during the discussion. The preliminary recommendation agreed on at this stage will be either accept, reject, or if agreement on a recommendation cannot be reached, a fourth option is to table the paper, for further review and discussion. The full papers committee meets June 17-18, 2011 to determine
acceptance or rejection of each paper. In cases where a consensus on a
paper was not reached during the pre-meeting discussion phase,
additional committee members may read the paper, and their evaluations
will be taken into account in the decision.
Email notifications of the Technical Papers Committee's decisions
should be sent not later than June 20, 2011. The notifications will
place each paper in one of the following three categories:
Rejected Conditionally accepted for presentation at UIST 2011.
Conditionally accepted papers undergo a second reviewing process, in
which a referee (a member of the Papers Committee) verifies
that the final version of the paper is acceptable (that any required
changes have been made, and that other changes made by the authors,
perhaps in response to reviewer comments, have not compromised the
paper in any way). This second and final stage determines the final
acceptance status of all papers. The referees' decisions are
final. Papers that do not satisfy the referees in the second stage of
reviewing and/or that are not uploaded in final form by the final
deadline of July 12, 2011, together with the original or revised versions
of the submitted supplementary material, will be rejected. Accepted
papers will appear in the conference proceedings.
A
good UIST submission will result in both a respectable document for the
proceedings and a good conference talk. As an author, you should ask
yourself the following questions before writing your paper. Submissions that do not provide good answers to these questions are unlikely to be accepted.
What problem are you solving?
There
is no point in publishing a paper unless it presents a solution to a
problem. Try to state all your constraints and assumptions. This is an
area where it can be invaluable to have someone not intimately familiar
with your work read the paper. Include a crisp description of the
problem in the abstract and try to suggest it in the title. The choice
of senior reviewer for the paper is based almost entirely on the answer
to this question.
What were the previous solutions?
What
are the relevant published works in your problem area? What
deficiencies in their solutions are you trying to overcome? How does
the new solution differ from previously published results? Don't expect
the reviewers to know this information without your telling them in the
paper, as they are unlikely to remember the precise details of all the
relevant literature. Make specific comparisons between your work and
that described in the references; don't just compile a list of vaguely
related papers.
How well did you solve your problem?
Based
on your problem statement, what did you accomplish? You are responsible
for proving that the problem is solved. Include pictures, statistics,
or whatever is required to make your case. If you find this part of the
paper difficult to write, perhaps the work is not yet finished and the
paper should be deferred until next year.
What does this work contribute to the field?
What
are your new ideas or results? If you don't have at least one new idea,
you don't have a publishable paper. Can your results be applied
anywhere outside of your project? If not, the paper is probably too
special-purpose for UIST. On the other hand, beware of trying to write
a paper with too large a scope.
Is the paper complete?
The
question that generates the most discussion at the program committee
meeting is whether a paper is complete. If the paper presents an
algorithm or technique, an experienced practitioner in the field should
be able to implement it using the paper and its references. If the
paper claims to present a faster or more efficient way of implementing
an established technique, it must contain enough detail to redo the
experiment on competing implementations. When you quote numbers, be
sure that they do not lie; state clearly whether they were measured,
simulated, or derived, and how you did the measurements, simulations,
or derivations. For example, CPU time measurements are meaningless
unless the reader is told the machine and configuration on which they
were obtained.
Does the paper contain too much information?
Many
large, poorly written papers contain a good paper trying to get out. It
is the author's responsibility, not the reviewer's, to discover this
paper and turn it into the submission. If you have solved a single,
practical problem, don't try to generalize it for the purposes of
publication. If you have a formal theory or elaborate architecture,
don't include all the vagaries of the implementation unless they are
critical to the utility of the theory. Don't include the contents of
your user's manual; instead, describe the model or functionality
achieved. You should assume your audience has a working knowledge of
user-interface development and access to the major journals in computer
science, electrical engineering, and psychology. A short conference
paper can only present a few concise ideas well.
Can this paper be presented well?
While
UIST papers are judged primarily as technical papers, some
consideration is given to how suitable the topic is for a conference
presentation. Think of how you would present your ideas, and how big
the audience is likely to be. Papers that have a small number of
concisely stated new ideas and that are visually interesting tend to
appeal to a large audience and be easy to present. As recent
conferences clearly show, these criteria do not eliminate papers that
have taxonomies or strong theoretical content, or appeal to a
specialized audience, if they contain significant new ideas.
Papers
that present new algorithms, techniques, or hardware are the easiest to
write and review. If the content is truly new and effective, and makes
a significant contribution to the state of the art, the paper is likely
to be accepted for UIST. Equally valuable, but harder to write and
evaluate, are papers that describe systems and applications. While the
criteria above will be applied to all papers, here we offer some
additional guidance for authors of systems and applications papers.
A systems paper may present a
real system, either by a global
survey of an entire system or by
selective examination of
specific themes embodied in the
system. Alternatively, it may
present the design for a system
that includes ideas or
techniques you feel are
important to present to the
technical community, even
without an implementation. Make
it obvious from the abstract and
introduction which kind of paper
yours is.
If a system has been
implemented, include information
about how it has been used and
what this usage shows about the
practical importance of the
system. Do the users include
anyone other than the authors?
Do they depend on it for their
work or do they just play with
it? Have formal user studies
been done and, if so, what are
the results? While user testing
is not required for UIST papers,
authors should be careful not to
make unsubstantiated claims for
systems which have not been
tested. However, papers can say
that the system "might be easier
to use because . . ." or that
"feature xxx is expected to make
the system easier to use because
. . .".
Also, if the system has been
implemented, including screen
snapshots is vital to convincing
readers and reviewers that the
system is real. Do not fake or
redraw screen shots; fakery is
usually obvious and is a clear
indication that the system is
not real.
If the system is still being
designed, it is most important
to state the design criteria and
constraints. Back up your
decisions with references to
similar systems that are already
implemented, stating what
problems you are solving or what
solutions you are including in
your design. Reviewers tend to
be very skeptical of design-only
papers, unless there are new
ideas of obviously high quality.
It is very important that you
clearly identify what is
implemented and what is merely
designed. Do so at the beginning
of the paper, not the end!
The paper should emphasize
the novel aspects of the system,
what underlying themes are
present, what problems were
anticipated/encountered in
building the system, and how the
structure presented provides
solutions to these problems. In
general, avoid details that are
only of interest to users of the
system and concentrate on those
that would be interesting to
someone else building a similar
system. Avoid sweeping claims,
especially for paper designs!
Roy Levin and David Redell's
article
How (and How Not) to Write a
Good Systems Paper,
although oriented towards
operating systems, is highly
recommended for further
guidelines on writing systems
papers.
At UIST 2007, Dan Olsen ran a
panel on Evaluating Interface
Systems Research. We strongly
encourage you to read the
associated paper, which is
available on the
ACM Digital Library and on
Dan's web page.
An application paper presents
an application area and a
problem in that area that
benefited from innovative user
interface techniques. The
techniques used don't have to be
unique, but their use must not
be completely obvious. The
author should concentrate on
what was learned, and how well
the user interface works
compared to previous techniques
for solving the same problem. As
in a systems paper, the intended
audience should be other
user-interface developers, not
the end user. Successful
applications papers provide some
general insight into the use of
interactive techniques to solve
problems.
As previously stated, a UIST
paper is accepted or rejected
based on the ratings it receives
from the reviewers. Paper
reviewing is a volunteer
activity; the only benefit that
the reviewers get is the
knowledge that they have
contributed to the field. In
many ways, the success of the
technical program is more a
function of the quality of the
reviewers than the work of the
program chair or the program
committee. We are lucky to have
excellent reviewers for this
conference and paper authors
should be considerate of them.
Many of the senior people in
this field receive a large
number of papers to review each
year. With this in mind, authors
should think about their
reviewers when they are
preparing their papers. In the
following paragraphs we provide
some advice on how to prepare
your paper so it makes the best
impression on a reviewer.
The most important point is
to put a reasonable amount of
effort into the production of
your paper. When the author
appears to have put little
effort or thought into the
production of a paper, the
reviewer is not motivated to
read the paper carefully and
produce a good review. There is
no excuse for spelling mistakes
in papers, since spelling
checkers are now widely
available. A large number of
misspelled words in a paper just
indicates to the reviewer that
the author didn't care enough
about his or her paper to run
the spelling checker on it. With
this attitude on the part of the
author, why should the reviewer
bother doing a good job? The
same goes for missing
references, mislabeled figures,
and other trivial problems that
could be caught by thorough
proofreading. Don't expect
reviewers to read your paper
carefully if you are not willing
to read it carefully first!
UIST reviewers will have
several papers to read in a
short period of time. Therefore,
you should write your paper so
that it is easy to read. Try to
write your paper so it flows
smoothly. A paper that is easy
to read will usually get a
higher rating.
Has this paper been submitted
to a conference before and been
rejected? If this is the case,
think carefully before you
submit it again! There must have
been some reason why the paper
was rejected. (Yes, we all blame
bad reviewing, but there must
also have been some other
reason.) Read the reviewers'
comments and try to determine
what they would like to see
changed, and then make those
changes. There is a surprisingly
good chance that a resubmitted
paper will be reviewed again by
a reviewer who gave it a poor
rating before (or who recalled
the deliberations over your
previous submission in a program
committee meeting of another
conference). If the paper has
not been changed to reflect that
reviewer's comments, it is
likely that your paper will get
an even lower rating. Yes,
sometimes the reviewer's
comments are wrong (reviewers
are only human after all), but
this usually implies that you
need to write more clearly or
provide more evidence for your
claims. Each of us has received
what we originally considered to
be bad reviews on some paper,
but after calm consideration
(weeks, or even months, later)
realized that these reviews
pointed out real faults in the
paper. If a hand-picked reviewer
is confused about what you are
saying, the chances are good
that the average reader will
also be confused!
A highly recommended
technique is to write the paper,
and let it sit on your desk for
a week or two. Then go back and
read the paper as if you were a
reviewer who doesn't know the
author. While you are writing a
paper, you are too closely tied
to the work to be able to
criticize it effectively. After
a break of a week or two, you
will be much more objective and
may see organizational problems
that weren't evident when you
were actively working on the
paper.
The single most important
thing you can do to improve the
odds of having your paper
accepted is to have your own
colleagues do an "in house"
review of it before you submit
it to the conference for formal
review. That requires beginning
far enough before the deadline
that you have a protective
cushion in your schedule, but
remember that the majority of
UIST papers are rejected. It's
far better to start a week or
two earlier and get your paper
accepted, than it is to get
rejected and feel as if you
wasted your time.
Since user interfaces are
inherently interactive, authors
are encouraged to include video
material with their papers. The
optional digital video that you
include with your submission
will be used only for
confidential internal
distribution to the reviewers.
Video
supporting paper
submissions should be anonymous.
Authors should make video
material short and accessible
without being misleading. A
video should give the same
impression as a live demo. For
example, a long computational
pause can only be removed if its
absence is made obvious through
techniques such as a visual
dissolve and a clear indication
(verbal and/or visual) of how
much time was removed. Videos
about technology mock-ups should
be clearly indicated as such.
Mock-ups should be avoided when
the video is about an
implemented system. The
supporting video accompanying a
submission for review is used
only to help reviewers evaluate
the submission; accepted paper
authors will have
the chance to submit a
higher-quality video for the
conference DVD proceedings.
Acceptable videos can be made
without expensive production or
special effects. A camcorder,
tripod, and some planning can
help guide the viewer's
attention. A smooth zoom into
the interaction area and then
out to the full screen is often
much more effective than a
static screen shot. Show how the
user manipulates the input
devices if that is relevant. The
DVD proceedings chairs have put
together a
guide describing how to make
good videos.
Supporting video need not be
stand alone, because the
reviewers will have the paper.
However, the paper must be
understandable without the
video, and the paper should not
include any references to the
video. You can assume that
everyone who has the video has
the paper, but not vice versa.
All authors are encouraged to
use video when appropriate as
part of their conference
presentation. A high-quality
master copy of each video file
should be sent to the DVD
proceedings chairs by the date
indicated in the acceptance
notifications for inclusion in
the DVD proceedings, which will
be distributed to conference
attendees only. Videos will also
be included as supplemental
material for the corresponding
papers in the ACM
Digital Library. Information
will be provided later about the
video formats that will be
accepted for the DVD. It is not
necessary for the videos to
stand alone -- it is assumed
that everyone who sees the video
will also have access to the
paper proceedings.
Rest assured that we will not
duplicate for public
distribution any video included
with your initial submission, so
please don't worry! Those files
will only be used during the
review process, and then all
copies received by UIST will be
destroyed or deleted.
Submissions for review must also
be in the final conference
format, except they should have
page numbers so
the reviewers can more easily
refer to portions.
Submissions must be in PDF
format, and video submissions
must be in one of the approved
file formats. Submission details
can be found at the UIST
Electronic Submission site (http://www.precisionconference.com/~sigchi).
If you want to
format-by-example (a reasonable
strategy), you can download a
sample pdf paper, properly
formatted. Sample
text-processing source files are
available for LaTeX (uistSample.tex
and
uist.sty), Microsoft Word (uistSample.doc)
and in RTF (uistSample.rtf).
A
PDF version of the latter
two sample files will help you
make sure that they are properly
loaded by your text processor.
Note that UIST uses 10 point
fonts with 11 points between
baselines for the body text
(unlike the official ACM sig
template, which uses 9 point
fonts). As indicated in the
samples, paper submissions are
anonymous.
Submissions to the posters, demos, and Doctoral Symposium track are not anonymous, and should use the UIST abstract format (doc, pdf).
It is to the author's
advantage to make the reviewer's
job as easy as possible! A
well-written paper containing
useful illustrations will appeal
to reviewers. Given that many of
the papers presented at UIST are
about systems, it is not
surprising that most accepted
papers include pictures or a
video to support the ideas
presented. It is not necessary
to have the ultimate picture or
the final, polished version of
the video for review. However,
the reviewers are much more
likely to prefer papers
containing some indication that
the author's claims are
supported than those that leave
the final results to the
reviewer's imagination.
An author of each accepted
paper is expected
to give a conference
presentation (exact length requirements
will be provided soon after
notification of acceptance).
Authors should include a note
with their submission if they
are planning anything for the
presentation that is not obvious
from the document; for example,
an author may point out that
there will be a video or live
demonstration at the conference
showing the results described in
a paper. Authors of accepted
submissions will be sent
detailed instructions for
preparing their conference
presentation.
The authors must be prepared
to sign an ACM copyright
transfer form before the
submission is published. The
author retains several rights,
including the right to post
versions on their home page and
employer web site. See the
ACM copyright policy and
copyright form for details.
This document was last
updated in February 2011 by Maneesh Agrawala and Scott Klemmer
(using
material provided by Saul
Greenberg), who inherited it from François Guimbretière, who inherited it
from Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, who
inherited it from Ravin
Balakrishnan and Chia Shen, who
inherited it from Ken Hinckley
and Pierre Wellner, who
inherited it from Dan Olsen, who
inherited it from Steve Feiner,
who inherited it from Joe
Konstan, who inherited it from
Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, who
inherited it from Ari Rapkin,
who inherited it from Beth
Mynatt, who inherited it from
George Robertson, who inherited
it from Marc H. Brown, who
inherited it from George
Robertson, who got lots of help
on it from Steve Feiner, Brad
Myers, Jock Mackinlay, Mark
Green, Randy Pausch, Pierre
Wellner, and Beth Mynatt.
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