ACM TOCHI Author Information

To Submit A Manuscript

Is TOCHI the Right Place to Publish Your Work?

TOCHI welcomes a broad range of submissions of original work. If you are not familiar with the journal, read the TOCHI Charter and examine back issues (Current and Past Issues).

TOCHI is committed to being the premier archival journal in human-computer interaction. It publishes only original and significant research papers. Manuscript length of up to approximately 11000 words is recommended, although longer papers will be considered. Survey papers will be considered only if they present a new perspective or clearly benefit the field. TOCHI will also consider ideas for special issues.

Note: Authors can now be concise AND thorough in a way not possible before: The ACM Digital Library will host ancillary material for a paper on its web site. This material, an online appendix that does not appear in the print journal, is linked to and accessed nicely from the online table of contents. This allows the best of both worlds: a concise presentation that is more likely to be read by general readers and students, and details (e.g., complete questionnaires, raw data, an annotated bibliography, or short animations) that are of interest mainly to others working in the area. Authors that wish to use this option should attach such material as an appendix to their submission and indicate in their cover letter that this material is intended to be ancillary material included in the digital library.

Submissions should cite relevant HCI work and show the relationship of the new work to prior research. Potentially relevant are papers in over 1000 CHI and related conference papers, TOCHI, HCI, and related journals, and the Handbooks of Human-Computer Interaction. Papers that do not cite any of this work either have overlooked relevant work, belong in a different journal (perhaps one of those cited), or should carefully position their work for this audience, explaining its relevance.

If you are still uncertain, consult the Editor at tochi@acm.org.

Use of Statistics

When reporting statistics, sufficient information, such as degrees of freedom, should be presented such that the reader can corroborate the analysis. For more recommendations and examples, see the "Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association" (APA Manual).

Prior Publication Policy

ACM journal articles are normally original papers which have not been published elsewhere. Widely disseminated conference proceedings and newsletters are a form of publication, although they may not be archival. Publication or republication of a (perhaps revised) paper which has been widely disseminated is permitted only if the Editor judges that (a) the revision contains significant amplification or clarification of the original material or (b) there is a significant additional benefit to be gained from journal publication.

Authors are required to submit a statement describing the relationship of their TOCHI submission to their own most closely related prior papers (or concurrently submitted papers). This description should clearly state the unique contribution of the current submission relative to the authors' prior publications, or, if the paper has no relation whatsoever to prior papers, the statement should clearly say that. The author statement should be included with the submitted paper; it can appear directly after the other back matter such as references and appendices.

Prior Submission Policy

If your paper was submitted to another journal or conference before being submitted to TOCHI - even if was revised after that prior submission experience, we require that you inform us of the prior submission in the cover letter.

Formatting and Preparing Your Manuscript

ACM now requires that accepted articles be submitted electronically. However, the use of the ACM format is not required for the initial submission. Authors are encouraged to examine the ACM format to facilitate the conversion that will be necessary upon acceptance.

ACM Accepted Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

Current and Past Issues provide examples of writing, article organization, and citation style. Relevant articles that deviate from the usual style may be reviewed, but will have to be reformatted to conform to ACM style if accepted.

To ensure proper indexing, classification, retrieval and dissemination, authors must include the following in the manuscript.

Descriptive title
Author names and affiliations
Abstract
Content indicators
Citations to relevant literature

The following are guidelines for the preparation of this material.

Descriptive Title

A title that accurately and clearly tells what the paper is about is generally the best. Cute or clever titles will not fare as well with the search engines and filters of the foreseeable future.

Author Names and Affiliations

Authors' names should be given without titles or degrees along with the name and address of the organization for which the work was carried out. The author's current address should be given in a footnote on the first page. Identify the contact author for co-authored work.

Abstract

The abstract should be 150 to 200 words and consist of short, direct, and complete sentences. It should be informative enough to serve in some cases as a substitute for reading the paper itself. It should state the objectives of the work, summarize the results, and give the principle conclusions, but omit future plans and citations. Try to avoid starting with the words "This paper ..."

Content Indicators

Three types of content indicators must be assigned: (1) categories and subject descriptors, (2) general terms, (3) keywords and phrases. The first two items are selected from the Computing Reviews Classification Scheme most recently revised in 1998. Select as many as are applicable. The keywords and phrases are additional English language words that indicate the content of the submission.

Citations

Please examine Current and Past Issues for examples of proper citation format.

Submitting Your Manuscript

Before submitting a manuscript, please use a spelling checker and correct errors in punctuation, grammar, figure and table numbering, and so forth. The appearance of carelessness can prejudice reviewers.

Authors are asked to submit manuscripts in PDF format, although Postscript submissions will also be accepted. In order to create a PDF document, you will need access to Adobe Acrobat's Distiller. Create a Postscript document and then convert it to PDF using Distiller. (Note: Avoid the use of the PDF Assistant or PDFWriter to create a PDF document. The Distiller produces better results more consistently than either of these two tools. Instructions for saving a document as Postscript.

Instructions for sending us your submission.

The ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) is now using the ACM ScholarOne Manuscript Central Site to receive and process submissions. Our new submission protocol consists of posting your paper to the Manuscript Central site and notifying us (at tochi@acm.org) that you have done so. If you submit a non-PDF file that gets converted to PDF automatically on submission to the site, we suggest that you check the converted PDF file for errors.

When you submit you paper, please check that all authors of your paper are registered in ACM ScholarOne Manuscript Central Site to be TOCHI reviewers. This is a requirement for submission. All authors who submit manuscripts to TOCHI are obligated to serve as referees in the review of other TOCHI submissions.

The Review Process

When we receive your manuscript and verify that it can be read and is within the scope of the journal, an Associate Editor will take responsibility for handling the review process. The Associate Editor will assign the article to 3-4 reviewers, study the reviews that are returned, and make an overall recommendation to the Editor. The contact author will be told the identity of the Associate Editor, but not the identities of the reviewers.

A manuscript submitted for the first time might be accepted or rejected, but most published articles first receive a "Revise and Resubmit" recommendation. If this happens, it may be very worthwhile to persevere, revising the manuscript to fix problems and clarify misunderstandings. Resubmissions should be accompanied with a cover letter that explains in detail how the comments of the reviewers were dealt with.

Accepted Manuscripts

If your submission is accepted for publication in TOCHI, the following process will be used to get your paper into the publication pipeline:

  1. The Editor-in-Chief or an Associate Editor will accept the paper with a email message. At this point, the author should ensure that a final version of the paper, incorporating the formatting instructions outlined by the ACM, has been uploaded to Manuscript Central.

  2. The paper then moves into an ACM production queue. ACM will process the submission and prepare it for publication in TOCHI. The author will be contacted by ACM during publication formatting.