CSCW

In just over two decades, CSCW has grown from a small group of researchers that recognized their shared interests across a variety of disciplines to a community that draws members from around the world and an even wider range of fields and interests. This year's conference continues that expansion, as you will find presentations on gaming, technology in the home, healthcare applications, social networking, and cross-cultural collaboration. The ACM CSCW Conference has a special role in compiling the most recent work in the field and creating a forum to share and build on that work to move the community forward. The premier status of ACM's CSCW Conference is hard-earned, in part because of its rigorous review process. Here is a glimpse into how this review process works.

For the first time this year, Full Papers (10 pages) and Notes (4 pages) submissions were reviewed under the same process and Program Committee. The three Papers and Notes chairs brought together perspectives from academia, corporate research, user studies, design, experimental methods, and mobile devices to select 36 Associate Chairs (ACs) to help oversee the review process. The set of ACs reflects the diversity of the community: 14 females, 22 males; 12 from industry, 24 from academia; 7 Europeans, 3 Canadians, 1 Japanese, and 25 Americans. They included well-established researchers as well as new rising stars with a diverse range of interests including systems design, groupware system building, psychology, social science, management science, and ethnography.

Each AC was given about 10 -- 12 submissions (a mix of Papers and Notes) to manage. They selected at least three knowledgeable and willing referees for each submission. Refereeing was through blind review. Each referee returned a recommendation along with a detailed review. ACs and the Papers and Notes chairs then examined a paper's reviews for consistency, sometimes asking for additional reviews if the existing ones were considered inadequate or if there was a wide divergence of opinion.

The Papers and Notes Chairs as well as all ACs then met in San Diego. Submissions with uniformly low reviews well below the acceptance threshold were rejected outright. Similarly, submissions with uniformly high reviews were accepted. Even so, any AC could indicate any submission for further discussion. This still left a large number of papers in the middle, where each was actively discussed by the committee. Each paper that was discussed was read before-hand by at least two ACs, and these two would deliberate over the paper, raise issues with the committee, and discuss thorny problems with all. While the ACs who read the paper made the final recommendation, the decision process was highly visible so that all could apply the same standards to their own papers.

In total, 370 submissions were received this year consisting of 235 Papers and 135 Notes. In the end, 64 Papers (27%) and 22 Notes (16%) were accepted. This selective acceptance rate is similar to historical acceptance rates at CSCW and our partner conferences UIST and CHI.

Of course, this is not a perfect process. There is always the issue of where to 'draw the line' between accepted and rejected submissions. Some rejected submissions were very close to the edge, and the committee agonized over these. The committee was also limited in that they had to judge a submission more or less 'as is'; thus some submissions were rejected even though their faults could have been overcome in a real revision cycle (i.e., as found with journals). As well, the conference itself imposes severe constraints, as there are only so many papers that can fit within its current three track structure. Bottom line: the committee arrived at a standard of what constituted a good Paper or Note, and accepted only submissions judged to adhere to that standard.

There is a debate on whether CSCW should be more permissive in how it accepts Papers and Notes, especially in light of the rising submission rate and overall submission quality. One step that the community is currently working toward is holding the CSCW conference every year. This might relieve some of the backlog generated by the current biennial cycle, and would also provide more frequent occasions for the community to gather and foster more collaboration.