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Special Interest Groups

Quick Facts

CHI 2024 will be a hybrid conference from May 11-16, 2024 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Important Dates

All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.

  • Submission deadline: Thursday, December 14th, 2023
  • Notification deadline: Thursday, February 1st, 2024
  • e-rights completion deadline: Thursday, February 8th, 2024
  • Publication-ready deadline: Thursday, February 29th, 2024
  • TAPS Closes: Thursday March 7th, 2024

Submission Details

Submission Format

  • SIG proposal should be a maximum of 5-pages (excluding references and mandatory supplementary material describing the SIG)
  • Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.

Selection Process

Reviewed

Update July 26, 2023

We recommend that authors read the following two policies before submitting:

  1. The April 2023 ACM Policy on Authorship and use of large language models (LLMs), and the SIGCHI blog post about it.
  2. The 2021 ACM Publications policy on research involving humans.

Message from the Special Interest Group Chairs

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) provide an opportunity to attract a group of conference attendees who share a common interest and engage them in face-to-face discussions. Organizing a SIG is a great way to start or extend your involvement in the CHI conference program. Several SIGs have evolved into other successful contribution types at subsequent conferences. In addition to interesting, timely and novel SIG topics, we also encourage creative approaches to conducting the SIG itself. While the SIG should provide a structure for discussion, successful SIGs have used exciting approaches to promote lively debate. For instance, previous years formats for the SIG session included a designathon, a reflection exercise, and a sketching group.

If you have any doubts regarding SIGs, we welcome you to contact us before submitting your proposal to discuss your ideas for innovative and attractive SIGs!

What is a Special Interest Group?

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) enable conference attendees sharing a common interest to meet informally for 75 minutes of facilitated discussion during a scheduled session at the conference. SIGs offer excellent opportunities for dialog and deliberation on a specific topic. The conference provides each SIG with meeting space and advertises SIG meetings to the rest of the conference in the Extended Abstracts and Conference Program.

Preparing and Submitting Your Special Interest Groups Proposal

SIG submissions must be submitted via the PCS Submission System. The submission must have the following components:

  • SIG Proposal: A 5-page description of the SIG (excluding references), suitable for publication in the ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column).
  • Supplementary Material (also mandatory) using the same template and up to 2-pages.
    • A brief description of the community (or communities) to which this SIG would be of interest and why it is of interest.
    • Assumed attendee background.
    • The approach you will use for organizing and presenting the SIG.
    • An informal schedule of discussion topics.
    • Your plan to attract a reasonable number of attendees.
    • Which organizer should serve as the primary contact.

While not strictly required, we prefer that proposals be authored by a minimum of two individuals representing at least two different organizations. We also encourage prospective SIG organizers to examine examples of accepted SIG abstracts from recent CHI conferences, available for download from the ACM Digital Library.

Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission. If you have any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility@chi2024.acm.org.

Metadata Integrity

All submission metadata, including required fields in PCS like author names, affiliations, and order, must be complete and correct by the submission deadline.  This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata after this deadline will be allowed.

Accessibility

Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions before peer review begins, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission for their paper and in the technical requirements for video content for their video. For any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility@chi2024.acm.org.

Selection Process

Submissions are Reviewed; although the process is highly selective, it does not necessarily follow a reviewing process by a committee, and authors should not expect to receive formal feedback on their submission other than the selection decision.

We consider the following criteria, in descending order of priority:

  • Appeal to the community: Is the topic both timely and of wide enough appeal to attract a significant audience? At the same time, is the topic sufficiently focused to allow for productive discussion during the SIG meeting? Too narrow, and the SIG might attract too few people; too broad, and it is difficult for progress to be made in the relatively short duration of a SIG.
  • Format: Is the proposed format conducive to discussion and shared insight? Will it be possible to achieve its aims? SIGs are not workshops, nor project showcases, nor tutorials.
  • Diversity of perspective: It helps to be able to show that the SIG will be able to encompass a wide perspective, and that the organizers can accommodate and facilitate discussion across this breadth. Places to show this are in the description of the intended community, the assumed attendee background, and the home institutions and disciplines of the organizers.
  • Continuity: Does the SIG support the development of a longer term interest group, for example follow-on SIGs or other types of contributions at subsequent CHI and other conferences, or a SIGCHI Community? If the topic is a very recent or new one, or a revival of an old topic, then arguments will need to be made, to demonstrate that it is a topic that will persist, rather than simply being this year’s fashion. If the topic is a continuation of previous SIG(s), then it is necessary to present the latest developments of the topic and their projection into the future.

Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. Submissions should NOT be anonymous. However, confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference, with the exception of title and author information which will be published on the website prior to the conference.

Examples of successful SIG submissions from previous years:

Upon Acceptance of Your Submission

The corresponding author of a conditionally accepted paper has to follow the instructions on preparing and submitting a final version by the Publication-Ready Deadline. If the authors cannot meet these requirements by the Publication-Ready deadline, the venue chairs will be notified and may be required to remove the paper from the program. The publication-ready version has to follow the LaTeX and Word templates from ACM. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: publications@chi2024.acm.org.

At the Conference

Accepted SIGs will have a scheduled session at the conference. After your SIG is accepted, we will notify you what technical support will be available. Rooms will be set up to facilitate discussion.

After the Conference

After the conference, the organizers are encouraged to continue their SIG by organizing a workshop at a future conference or creating and maintaining a website. Accepted SIG proposals will be published in CHI Conference Extended Abstracts in the ACM Digital Library.