[Asis-l] CfP: ACM CSCW 2013 - Two-phase review process, removal of arbitrary page limits (deadline June 1)

[N. Sadat Shami]

CALL FOR PAPERS, COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK 2013 (CSCW 2013)
San Antonio, TX, Feb 23-27
http://cscw.acm.org

CSCW is an international and interdisciplinary conference focused on
how technology intersects with social practices. To support diverse
and high-quality contributions, CSCW employs a two-phase review
process described below. CSCW does not impose an arbitrary length
limit on submissions; please refer to the call below for details about
aligning paper contribution and length.

IMPORTANT DATES
* May 25, 2012: Title and Abstract requested (to improve reviewer match)
* June 1, 11:59 Pacific Daylight Time: Submissions due
* July 27: First-round notification (Revise & Resubmit or Reject)
* August 27, 11:59 Pacific Daylight Time: Revised papers due
* October 19: Final notifications
* November 26, 11:59 Pacific Daylight Time: "Camera-ready" due

SUBMISSIONS
Title, abstract and paper submissions must be made via the Precision
Conference System. A link to the submission site will be made
available by early May.

We invite submissions that detail existing practices or inform the
design or deployment of systems. The scope of CSCW includes, but is
not limited to, social computing, technologically-enabled or enhanced
communication, collaboration, information sharing, and coordination.
It includes socio-technical activities at work, in the home, in
education, in healthcare, in the arts, for socializing and for
entertainment. New results or new ways of thinking about, studying or
supporting shared activities can be in these and related areas:

- Social Computing. Studies, theories, designs, mechanisms, and
software infrastructures addressing social networking, user-generated
content, online gaming, crowdsourcing and collective intelligence,
virtual worlds, collaborative information seeking, etc.
- Theories and models. Critical analysis or organizing theory with
clear relevance to the design or study of social and collaborative
systems.
- System design. Hardware, architectures, infrastructures, interaction
design, technical foundations, or toolkits that enable the building of
new social and collaborative systems.
- Empirical investigations. Findings, guidelines, ethnographic studies
of technologies, practices or use of communication, collaboration and
social communication technologies.
- Methodologies and tools. Novel methods or combinations of approaches
and tools used in building systems or studying their use.
- Domain-specific social and collaborative applications. For
healthcare, transportation, gaming (for enjoyment or work), ICT4D,
sustainability, collective intelligence or global collaboration, or
other domains.
- Collaboration systems based on emerging technologies. Mobile and
ubiquitous computing, game engines, virtual worlds, and sensor-based
environments.
- Crossing boundaries. Studies, prototypes, or other investigations
that explore interactions across disciplines, distance, languages,
generations, and cultures, to help better understand how to transcend
social, temporal, and spatial boundaries.

Papers should detail original research contributions. Papers must
report new research results that represent a contribution to the
field. They must provide sufficient details and support for their
results and conclusions. They must cite relevant published research or
experience, highlight novel aspects of the submission, and identify
the most significant contributions. Evaluation is on the basis of
originality, significance, quality of research, quality of writing,
and contribution to conference program diversity.

PAPER LENGTH (new for CSCW 2013)
There is no arbitrary minimum or maximum length imposed on papers.
Rather, reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a
paper relative to its length. Papers should report research thoroughly
but succinctly: brevity is a virtue. Many research papers will be 10
pages long (the previous length limit for papers) but may be shorter
if the contribution can be described and supported in fewer pages.
While we will review papers longer than 10 pages, the contribution
must warrant the extra length: the more you write, the more work for
reviewers! Shorter, more focused papers (called Notes in years prior
to 2013) are encouraged and will be reviewed like any other paper.
Papers whose length is incommensurate with their contribution will be
rejected.

Papers will be presented at the CSCW conference and will be included
in the conference proceedings archived in the ACM Digital Library.
CSCW does not accept submissions that were published previously in
formally reviewed publications or that are currently submitted
elsewhere.

Submissions must be in the HCI Archive Format.

Send queries about Paper submissions to papers2013 at cscw.acm.org.

Papers are subject to blind reviewing. Your submission should have
authors' names and affiliations removed and avoid obvious identifying
features. Citations to your own relevant work should not be anonymous,
but please cite it without identifying yourself as the author. For
example, say "Prior work by [author]" instead of "In my prior work."

Papers must include an abstract of no more than 150 words. Titles and
Abstracts that are uploaded to PCS early will be used to find the best
possible reviewer matches. Consider submitting a video that
illustrates your work, either as a video figure judged as part of the
submission (no more than two minutes long and 30MB in size) or as a
longer stand-alone submission to the video track (Call for Videos).
Videos are not required for submission of papers.

CSCW 2013 Papers submissions must be uploaded online at the PCS
submission system by 11:59 Pacific Daylight Time on June 1, 2012 to be
considered. Confidentiality of submitted material will be maintained.
Upon acceptance, the titles, authorship, and abstracts of Papers will
be used in the Advance Program. Submissions should contain no
information or material that will be proprietary or confidential at
the time of publication, and should cite no publication that will be
proprietary or confidential at that time.

Final versions of accepted Papers must be formatted according to the
detailed instructions. Copyright release forms must be signed for
inclusion in the proceedings and ACM Digital Library.

CSCW 2013 will continue the "Best of CSCW" awards program, in
accordance with SIGCHI guidelines. Upon acceptance, some Papers will
be nominated for additional review to identify "Honorable Mention" and
"Best" awards. Approximately 5% of submissions may be nominated and 1%
of total submissions awarded Best Paper.

REVIEW PROCESS (new as of CSCW 2012)
Papers will undergo two review cycles. After the first review a
submission will receive either a "Revise & Resubmit" or "Reject"
notification. Authors of papers that are not rejected have about 4
weeks to revise and resubmit them. The revision will be reviewed as
the basis for the final decision. This is like a journal process,
except that it is limited to one revision with a strict deadline.

The primary contact author will be sent the first round reviews.
Revise & Resubmits will require significant attention to prepare the
resubmission for the second review. Authors of Revise & Resubmits will
be asked to provide a description of how reviewer comments were
addressed. Submissions that are rejected in the first round cannot be
revised for CSCW 2013, but authors can begin reworking them for
submission elsewhere. Authors need to allocate time for revisions
after July 27, when the first round reviews are returned. Final
acceptance decisions will be based on the second (revised) submission.

The revision cycle enables authors to spend a month to fix the
English, integrate missing papers in the literature, redo an analysis,
adopt terminology familiar to this field, and perhaps even gather more
data, problems that in the past could lead to rejection. It also
provides the authors of papers that would have been accepted anyway
the opportunity to make their submissions even stronger contributions
to the CSCW research literature. The revision is submitted with a
letter where the authors explain how the paper was revised, allowing
more interaction between authors and reviewers.

This review process is not an effort to change the “quality bar” for
CSCW, either to raise or lower it! Instead, the intent is to give more
authors a chance to clear the bar. This process may lead to more
diverse kinds of papers qualifying. Reviewers have more time to
consider the significance as well as the technical quality of
submissions. Authors from related disciplines have an opportunity to
adjust to the literature and terminology found in CSCW.

This is not an invitation to submit extended abstracts or incomplete
papers. As in the past, submit the paper that you would like to have
published. Incomplete submissions will not be reviewed. Nearly half of
submissions may be rejected on the first round, enabling the reviewers
to focus on papers that have a good chance for acceptance. The
strongest first round submissions will receive reviews that make it
clear to the authors that few or no revisions are required for
acceptance Acceptance is not guaranteed for papers making the second
round; however, the CSCW 2012 experience showed that the majority of
papers that made it to the second round were accepted. As a specific
data point, nearly all submissions that received an average review
score of 4 (out of 5) or higher were accepted.

Additional author benefits: The rebuttal, which was focused on
pointing out reviewing flaws, is replaced by a revision, which can be
more appealing to read and actually improve your work. Authors of
papers not making it through the first round benefit from a very quick
turnaround.

The CSCW 2012 program was the largest in the history of the
conference, and reactions from the community were largely very
positive. To get a sense of the range of topics covered, you can view
the CSCW 2012 program which comprised 164 papers, 65 interactive
posters, 14 workshops, as well as demos, videos, and other events
http://cscw2012.org/. CSCW 2013 expects to build on this success.