Info at a Glance

• Submissions are due on Thursday, April 11th, 2024, AoE (Friday, April 12th, 2024, 14:00 CEST) (NO EXTENSIONS)
• Submissions will be reviewed in a double-anonymous fashion
• Submissions can be submitted in English or German.
• Submissions and camera-ready versions need to follow the respective ACM templates and the SIGCHI Accessibility guidelines
• Submissions are handled through Precision Conference

Call for Papers – Theme “Hybrid Worlds”

The “Mensch und Computer” (MuC) conference, launched in 2001, is the largest conference series on human-computer interaction in Europe. This year’s theme is “Hybrid Worlds”; however, contributions are not required to relate to the theme. 

Contribution Types 

• Empirical-Qualitative, e.g., ethnography, qualitative user studies.
• Empirical-Quantitative, e.g., quantitative user studies, statistical methods, data modeling.
• Empirical-Mixed Methods, e.g., combined qualitative and quantitative empirical research.
• Technical, e.g., building novel systems, algorithms, visualizations, architectures, and implementing novel features in existing systems.
• Artefact-Design, e.g., research through design, envisionments, guidelines, methods, and techniques.
• Theoretical, e.g., conceptual frameworks, theoretical analysis, and essays.
• Meta-Research, e.g., meta-analyses, systematic reviews.

Timeline

All deadlines are set to Anywhere on Earth (AoE). In contrast to previous years, the deadline will not be extended at a later point. Please consider all dates and times final. 

Paper Submission: Thursday, April 11th, 2024 AoE (Friday, April 12th, 2024, 14:00 CEST) (NO EXTENSIONS)

Decision Notification: Tue, May 28th, 2024

Camera-Ready Deadline: Tue, June 11th, 2024

Preparing Your Submission

We recommend that submitted papers should range between 4000 and 9000 words; however, the length should be reflected by the contribution, and excessively long papers (more than 12,000 words) may be desk rejected. If a paper is less than 4000 words, we strongly recommend that you submit your work to the Short Papers Track. Regardless, text length is expected to match the contribution made. Papers can be submitted either in English or in German. 

Formatting

Authors are required to use the single-column ACM Manuscript template. Submission preparation is described on the ACM Primary Template website. The TAPS workflow is described on ACM’s TAPS workflow page.

For LaTex, the correct templates (Overleaf or LaTeX templates) can be found on ACM’s “Preparing your article for LaTeX” page, using \documentclass[manuscript,review,anonymous]{acmart}.

For Word, the correct submission template can be found on ACM’s “Preparing your article for Word” page, i.e., “submission template.”

Supplementary Materials

All videos and supplementary material must be anonymized. Videos can be of any length and should include closed captions as well as audio descriptions, see Accessible Presentation Guide. Other supplementary material may include, for example, survey text, experimental protocols, source code, and data, all of which can help others replicate your work. Any non-video supplementary material should be submitted as a single .zip file, including a README file with a description of the materials. Reviewers should be able to access the contribution of the paper solely based on the main PDF submission. That is, the paper submission must stand independently without the supplementary material.

Submission

Submissions are facilitated via the Precision Conference system. Authors may submit and edit their materials until the submission deadline. Should you encounter any difficulties, or technical problems or have any questions about this process, please contact the Paper Chairs via papers@mensch-und-computer.de. 

Accessibility 

Authors are expected to follow SIGCHI’s Guide to an Accessible Submission. If you have questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the DEI & Accessibility Chairs via accessibility@mensch-und-computer.de early in the writing process (the closer to the deadline, the less time the team will have to respond to individual requests). Papers flagged as inaccessible by a reviewer will have to be reassigned. Note that while we strive to match the best reviewer to each paper – the best reviewers for the work may not be able to review an inaccessible submission.

Inclusivity

Submissions should be prepared with an active consideration towards the respectful use of language, particularly towards marginalised groups, particularly around gender and disability.

Anonymity

All submissions need to be fully anonymised. This includes any appendices or supplemental material as well as a potential acknowledgements section. Regarding prior works of the authors, we recommend an explicit citation but avoiding phrasings such as ‘As we have shown previously…’ to favour more neutral ones (e.g., ‘As previously shown by…’).  Reviewing will be conducted in a double-anonymous fashion, i.e., reviewers and authors are anonymous to each other. Papers that violate the anonymization policy, including within the supplemental materials or external links to datasets, code repositories, etc., will be desk rejected.

Research Involving Human Participants

As a researcher, you have an overriding obligation to protect participants’ welfare and safety and to ensure they are treated fairly and with respect. We recommended the following document by the European Commission on „Ethics in Social Science and Humanities“ for a wider and deeper understanding of the underlying basic ethical principles and “Research Ethics in Ethnography/Anthropology.” These include doing good (beneficence), avoiding doing harm (non-malificence), and protecting the autonomy, well-being, safety, and dignity of all research participants. Moreover, all researchers involving participants must meet appropriate ethical and legal standards as outlined in the following document: ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects.

Use of Generative Tools

All authors should be aware of the ACM Policy on Authorship, which articulates the authorised use of generative AI in submitted works. Text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT must be clearly marked where such tools are used for purposes beyond editing the author’s text. All authors are responsible for the content created by these tools, the use of the tools must be disclosed (e.g., in the acknowledgements), and the tool cannot be listed as an author. As such, authors are responsible for plagiarism, misrepresentation, fabrication, or falsification of content and/or references generated through the use of generative AI tools, and could be sanctioned with penalties, such as a publication ban. We will investigate submissions brought to our attention and will reject papers where LLM use is not clearly marked.

Selection Process

Paper submissions are formally reviewed through a review process, and feedback is received from reviewers. The criteria for evaluation are as follows:

• Contribution/Importance of the Paper to Mensch und Computer: Does this work present research contributions or ideas that will stimulate interesting conversations among conference attendees?
• Significance: How important is the problem or question that this submission addresses? Is there an audience at the conference that would find this work influential and/or compelling?
• Originality/Novelty: How does the work build on, or speak to, existing work in the area? Does it make a novel contribution?
• Correctness/Validity: How well are the chosen methods described and justified within the submission?
• Clarity: How clear, understandable, and targeted is the writing? To what extent does the submission conform to all requirements?

The submission should contain no sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at the time of publication. All submissions are considered confidential during the review. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity.

For a sustainable reviewing process, we strongly encourage all authors to volunteer as reviewers via Precision Conference.

Upon Acceptance

Camera Ready Process

The publication-ready version has to follow the new LaTeX and Word templates from ACM and the TAPS workflow. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to the proceedings chairs via proceedings@mensch-und-computer.de. Authors will be required to assign either copyright or license to the ACM or to pay a fee to ACM for Open Access. Authors whose paper is written in German are required to provide an English abstract and title that accompanies the German abstract. Papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library and the GI Library. Please see the detailed author instructions.

Presentation at the Conference

For each accepted submission, at least one author must register for the conference and present their work synchronously in-person or remotely through a video. Presentations should follow the ACM SIGACCESS recommendations for accessible presentations. Authors are allowed to present in English and German; however, we recommend having English slides.