CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USA

Why CHI Fragmented
Jonathan Grudin
Microsoft ResearchRedmond, WA 98027
jgrudin@microsoft.com
ABSTRACTIn journal-centered fields, conferences represent work inprogress toward journal publication. Higher acceptance
rates enable participation by researchers from otherdisciplines, students, and practitioners who do not aim forjournal publication. In contrast, CHI researchers wantacademic review committees to consider our major
conference papers alongside journal articles. To achieve thepolished quality needed to make a case for this led to 15%25% acceptance rates. This is a barrier to participation forresearchers in other fields: If they submit work-in-progressas they do to their conferences it will be rejected, and they
may be reluctant to put effort into polishing conference
papers that earn little credit in their discipline. Highrejection rates also push people out. Because few papers in
any one specialization are accepted, only specialized
conferences can provide a broad view of current activity inan area. Many rejected submissions to CHI and other major
conferences are salvageable, so hundreds of papers areavailable for such specialized conferences, which often
have a more inclusive, warmer atmosphere. Practitioners
not inclined to achieve the polish desired by a tenurecommittee look elsewhere. Two-thirds of CHI’83 papers
were from industry. Today, 80% of CHI papers have anacademic first author, and 90% have an academic author.

I have been active in SIGCHI since 1983, serving on theExecutive Committee and many conference and programcommittees. After editing ACM TOCHI for six years, I
explored the history of CHI and related fields. The“conference-centered” model unique to U.S. computerscience, wherein little published research reaches journals,and uncertainty regarding HCI’s academic niche havecreated an unusual situation. I propose some paths forward.
Categories and Subject Descriptors

H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
Keywords

conference, journal, research, practice, design, development
INTRODUCTION

By 1988, six years after SIGCHI formed and five years
after its first conference, today’s organization andconference structure were largely in place, managed bymembers many of whom are still active. By 1988 SIGCHI
had sponsored Hypertext, UIST and CSCW conferences,beginning the dispersion of related research into what are
now dozens of conferences. Annual conferences in othermature fields focus on community maintenance, attracting
people from sub-specializations and related fields.
Examples are AAA, APA, ASA, AOM and HFES inanthropology, psychology, sociology, management andhuman factors. Major CHI-sponsored conferences haveinstead followed the norm of U.S. computer science,emphasizing quality. An inadvertent consequence is acentrifugal effect: Smaller conferences are ‘spun off’ orconditions for their establishment and success are created,and participation by people in related fields is obstructed.

Recognizing that the academic credentialing role conflicts
with community-building and practitioner inclusion, CHI
developed alternative venues, such as demos and lab
overviews. However, concern about the reputation of theconference results in these venues also being highly
selective. They are often screened by academics. And many
practitioners want to participate by presenting papers.
A SHIFTING ACADEMIC NICHE

In 1983, CHI mainly comprised experimental psychologists
hired by technology companies to address newly emergingcommercial interactive systems. A decade later, many of
the first wave returned to academia from industry. Few
joined psychology or cognitive science departments, which
never widely embraced human-computer interaction. HCI
established a foothold in computer science, but in many
traditional departments it remains marginalized. Today
many HCI researchers are moving to schools of information
science or informatics.

CONSEQUENCES OF A QUALITY ASSESSMENT ROLE

Books are the evidence of quality work in the humanities.
Journals have this role in the sciences, including European
computer science. U.S. computer science uniquely
considers conferences to be the final repository for mostresearch [1, 2]. Reasons for this are discussed below, butmore significant are the far-reaching consequences.

Throughout, CHI researchers have sought acceptance as ascience. Sciences do not publish applied papers in their top
journals. CHI could thus not accept practitioner papers in

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
CHI 2005, April 2–7, 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA.
ACM 1-59593-002-7/05/0004.

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CHI 2005 | Development Consortium

April 2-7 | Portland, Oregon, USAmodeling. Originally significant CHI endeavors, these are
now the focus of the largest and most recent technicalgroups of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, ledby people active in CHI two decades ago.

conferences argued to be of academic caliber. This, and theneed to establish a unique identity, has led CHI to exclude
work from related fields such as design, human factors &ergonomics, information systems, and marketing.

I no longer think CHI can open up to emulate the big-tent
conferences with a community-building role in otherdisciplines. Had CHI accepted 60% of submissions, notenough quality work would have remained to create andsustain UIST, CSCW, DIS, Hypertext, Ubicomp, Group,CSCL, CUU, HICSS mini-tracks, HFES technical groups,
WWW sessions, UPA, DUX, and so on. Many would betracks within a large CHI. But CHI followed U.S. CS, notjournal-centered fields, and declared conferences archival.
The other conferences, many with higher acceptance rates
and more participative, warmer settings, now haveconstituencies. People submit directly to them.

ASSESSING THE CENTRIFUGAL STRESSIt is important to emphasize how strongly CHI differs fromother umbrella conferences, and how great is the force thatdrives out anything not considered part of a somewhat
elusive “science of human-computer interaction.” Major
conferences in related fields attract people with large tradeshows, timing that aligns with academic recruiting, andacceptance rates around 50%-75%. In these fields
conferences have no significant standing as quality markers.
CHI’s drive to establish scientific credentials for ourconferences has forced us to eschew a trade show, notemphasize recruiting, hold acceptance rates to 15%-20%,and largely ignore the state of our journals.

Proposals

Why is U.S. computer science different in this respect?
Factors could include these: The high number ofconferences. The limited shelf-life of many results, morecommon in engineering and other applied disciplines thanin scientific disciplines, a consequence of Moore’s Law.
The recently achieved ability to distribute proceedings at aconference. The willingness of professional societies(ACM, IEEE) to archive proceedings, initially in print form
and now digitally. (The lack of such activity in Europe andAsia prevents conferences from attaining the same status.)

In the mid-1980s, CHI became the responsibility of people
in their twenties and thirties, many in industry. A newcohort of that age is evident today. In fact, about 50% ofCHI 2004 attendees were students. Much could be said forturning the franchise over to them, but the current leaders,
now mostly in academia with grants to obtain and students
to place, will not let go any more graciously than did manyof the founders who were forced out twenty years ago.
Two thoughts: SIGCHI could propose that organizers ofrelated conferences commit to participate as an experimentin two unified mega-conferences, perhaps in 2008 and2009. Each would organize its own program and benefit
from one central conference committee. Along with ACM
conferences, try to attract co-sponsored (e.g., DUX) andnon-ACM (e.g., UPA) conferences. A must-attend megaconference would provide opportunities to sample otherdisciplines, recruit speakers from them, and organize jointactivities. Lower travel expenses would offset the drawbackof more session conflicts for those who currently attend
several conferences. Overlapped submission and reviewing
would create some stress. A commitment to trying it twice
would ensure that success would leave time to organize acontinuation. Alternatively, ACM might create a new
digital library entity, the ‘cleaned-up conference paper’
subject to further reviewing, revision, and extension, which
would over time enable the CHI conference to revert to thetraditional community-building and maintenance function
by accepting far more papers. Otherwise, fragmentation islikely to continue, probably through online developments.

Conferences are rapid ways to disseminate information,
they are socially rewarding, deadlines can be motivating.
The principle drawbacks have been space limitations, which
may melt as the advantages of digital proceedings build,and the lack of a serious review and revision cycle. The
latter is ultimately a journal’s advantage, but it is clear that
our field is inclined to try to inject revision elements into
our major conferences rather than return to a journal
orientation. We thus need to think about other ways toovercome the centrifugal effect of selective conferences.
First consider some groups that were pushed out. CHI’83
was formally co-sponsored by the Human Factors Society,whose members chaired and populated the programcommittee and program. CHI was concerned with the lackof scientific status of human factors and within a few years,
most members of this journal-oriented field were gone.
CSCW’88 included many program committee and program
participants from the journal-oriented information systems
field. They were soon gone. Recently, an “HCI in MIS”
group formed with the explicit intent of bridging to CHI.
Their high-acceptance work-in-progress conference
sessions do not appeal to CHI researchers; their papers do
not get into CHI. Prospects for success are low. A dramaticdemonstration of centrifugal force is the migration ofresearch on cognitive engineering and human performance

REFERENCES

1. Grudin, J. (2004). Crossing the divide. ACM Trans. on
Computer-Human Interaction, 11, 1, 1-25.
2. Grudin, J. (in press). Three faces of human-computerinteraction. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

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