Call for Participation:
Papers & Notes

ACM Interactive Tabletops & Surfaces 2012
"Surfaces Every Day"

The field of Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces is rapidly evolving. Hardware prices are falling, core sensing technology is improving, software toolkits are maturing, and interaction paradigms are slowly beginning to solidify. As a result, interactive tabletops and surfaces are increasingly making their way beyond laboratories and appearing in a wide variety of private and public spaces including museums, offices, schools, airports, hotels, medical centers, and homes. Such surfaces employ a variety of technologies (capacitive sensing, computer vision, motion sensors, etc.) and appear in varied form-factors (large walls and tabletops, tablets and slates, flexible materials, on-demand projection, etc.). The ACM conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces brings together researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds and interest areas. The intimate size of this single-track symposium provides an ideal venue for leading researchers, practitioners, and students to exchange research results and experiences. We encourage submissions on (but not limited to) the following topic areas as they relate to interactive tabletops and surfaces:

  • Systems for, experiences with, and/or evaluations of surfaces in specific application areas (education, science, business, entertainment, health, accessibility, homes, etc.)
  • Gesture-based interfaces
  • Multi-modal interfaces
  • Tangible interfaces
  • Novel interaction techniques
  • Data handling/exchange
  • Information visualization/data presentation
  • Software engineering methods
  • Computer supported collaborative work
  • Co-located, distributed, or mixed-presence collaboration
  • Middleware and network support
  • Virtual reality and augmented reality
  • Social protocols
  • Hardware, including sensing and input technologies with novel capabilities
  • Human-centered design and methodologies
  • Interaction in context
  • Evaluations and user studies

Papers and Notes

We invite paper submissions of two kinds: Papers (10 pages) and Notes (4 pages). Papers must present original, innovative, and forward-looking research, possibly in one or more of the themes given above. Notes must also report novel and complete research, but with a more focused and succinct contribution than papers. Submissions must be submitted as a single PDF file in the ACM format through the submission system. When appropriate, authors are also encouraged to submit a supplementary video file (not to exceed 3 minutes in length and 30 MB in size).

Important Dates

  • June 25, 5:00 p.m. PDT: Deadline for initial submissions
  • August 1: First-round notifications (Revise or Reject)
  • August 24, 5:00 p.m. PDT: Deadline for revised submissions
  • September 12: Final notifications (Accept or Reject)
  • September 22: Deadline for camera-ready submissions

New Review Process

Frequently Asked Questions about the new review process

We are excited to introduce a new review process for ITS 2012. This process is modeled on the process used for the 2012 ACM CSCW conference; based on their experiences, we anticipate that this process will result in more fair and consistent reviews, as well as higher and more uniform quality in the final program, without increasing total reviewer workload.

Papers and Notes will undergo two review cycles. After the first review a submission will receive either a “Revise” or “Reject” decision. Authors of papers that are not rejected will have 3 ½ weeks to revise and resubmit them. The final revision will be re-reviewed as the basis for the final decision. This is similar to a journal process, except that it is limited to one revision with a strict deadline.

The primary contact author will be sent the first-round reviews on August 1. Submissions that are rejected in the first round cannot be revised for ITS 2012, but authors can begin reworking them for submission elsewhere. The reviews should help the authors of papers in the “revise” category to prepare their revisions for the second round. Authors will also submit an additional document in the second round, which provides a description of how the reviewers’ comments were addressed. Authors need to allocate time for revisions between August 1 and August 24. Revised submissions must be uploaded to PCS by 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on August 24 to be considered. Final acceptance decisions will be based on the revised submission.

This is not an invitation to submit extended abstracts or incomplete papers. As in the past, submit the paper that you would like to have published. Incomplete or otherwise non-competitive submissions will be desk-rejected without review. We anticipate that approximately half of the submissions will be rejected in the first round, enabling reviewers to focus on papers that have a reasonable chance for acceptance. Acceptance is not guaranteed for papers making the second round, but we expect that papers that undergo serious efforts to address the reviewer comments will have a strong chance for acceptance.

Papers vs. Notes

Papers (up to 10 pages) and Notes (up to 4 pages) should detail original research contributions. Papers and Notes will be presented at the ITS conference, be included in the conference proceedings, and be archived in the ACM Digital Library. ITS does not accept submissions that were published previously in formally reviewed publications or that are currently submitted elsewhere. Papers and Notes go through the same review process.

A Paper must break new ground and provide complete and substantial support for its results and conclusions as a significant contribution to the field. A Note must report new results that represent a contribution to the field. Compared to Papers, Notes may include less discussion of related work, evaluation, or implementation detail. Notes are held to the same standard of scientific quality as Papers, but are more focused and succinct in scope and scale.

ITS 2012 will have a “Best of ITS” awards program, in accordance with SIGCHI guidelines. Approximately 5% of submissions may receive “Honorable Mentions” and 1% may receive “Best Paper/Note” awards.

Submission Information

Submissions should use the format shown in the conference template. A LaTex template is available; note, however, that it is slightly out of date, as Sheridan Printing strongly recommends the use of Microsoft Word to create camera-ready files that adhere to their publishing guidelines. We recommend that people using LaTex also view the current PDF version of the guidelines and try to modify their file to match it as closely as possible. Submissions should be converted to PDF and uploaded to the Precision Conference system by 5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on June 25, 2012. The PCS system will be open for uploading submissions beginning on May 25th.

When appropriate (such as for submissions introducing novel systems or interaction techniques), authors are encouraged to submit a supplementary video file (not to exceed 3 minutes in length and 30 MB in size).

All submissions should be anonymized for double-blind review. This means that your paper and any supplementary video materials should have authors’ names and affiliations removed and avoid obvious identifying features. Citations to your own relevant work should not be anonymous, but please cite such work without identifying yourself as the author. For example, say “Prior work by Smith et al. [1]” instead of “In my prior work.”

Confidentiality of submitted material will be maintained. Upon acceptance, the titles, authorship, and abstracts of Papers and Notes will be published online in the Advance Program. Submissions should contain no information or material that will be proprietary or confidential at the time of publication, and should cite no publication that will be proprietary or confidential at that time. Final versions of accepted Papers and Notes must be formatted according to the instructions we provide. Copyright release forms must be signed for inclusion in the proceedings and in the ACM Digital Library.

Mentorships

ITS 2012 offers a mentorship program to help those with less experience in academic publication. This mentoring program is intended primarily for authors from non-academic backgrounds, including industry. Mentors will be the chairs or volunteers who are familiar with successful submissions at ITS and relevant conferences (such as CHI, UIST, and CSCW). They will help you prepare your submissions to the ITS audience through one-on-one advising. However, please note that we cannot guarantee that your submission will be accepted at ITS in any case.

When you submit a mentoring request, please specify what help you primarily expect from the mentor, such as:

  • Deciding whether ITS is an appropriate venue to present your work;
  • Deciding which ITS submission category is most appropriate for your work (e.g., a paper vs. a note);
  • Getting more familiar with relevant literature;
  • Organizing your research contribution and paper; and/or
  • Another kind of help (please specify clearly).

A mentor will offer mostly high-level suggestions on your submission. Although they will do their best to improve your submission, they may not able to offer all kinds of help you have asked due to the tight schedule of the mentoring program (usually, a mentor would spend a few hours on each submission). The mentors will not be expected to provide thorough writing assistance, such as grammatical corrections. We cannot help any complete translation or re-writing either. We would like to suggest finding someone in your local area for those purposes.

The deadline to submit a mentoring request is 5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on June 18, 2012. If you are interested in the mentoring program, please contact the Mentoring Chairs via email at mentoring@its2012conf.org along with:

  • The information of the contact person (usually, the first author),
  • The description of what help you are expecting from a mentor,
  • A description of your work (up to 4 pages, a PDF file preferred) containing:
    • An abstract,
    • A description of your research contributions,
    • A short summary of your systems/techniques/methods,
    • A short summary of the results, and
    • Relevant literature.
  • The list of the names and affiliation of the all authors.

The submitted information will not be shared in any part of the paper review process or with any third party to maintain the submission's anonymity and confidentiality. You will receive comments from your mentor approximately one week after your submission, but could be delayed depending on the submission volume. Thus, we would like to encourage you to submit your request as soon as possible.

If you are a student, mentors are not meant to replace your own academic faculty. We strongly recommend you discuss requesting a mentor with your faculty advisor.

If you have any question in mentoring, please contact the Mentoring Chairs via email at mentoring@its2012conf.org.

Program Co-Chairs

Meredith Ringel Morris, Microsoft Research
Michael Horn, Northwestern University
program@its2012conf.org

Program Committee

Alissa N. Antle, Simon Fraser University
Alex Butler, Microsoft Research Cambridge
Raimund Dachselt, Technische Universitat Dresden
Pierre Dillenbourg, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Kentaro Fukuchi, Meiji University
Darren Gergle, Northwestern University
Michael Haller, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
Mark Hancock, University of Waterloo
Bjoern Hartmann, University of California, Berkeley
Pourang Irani, University of Manitoba
Andruid Kerne, Texas A&M Univeristy
Paul Marshall, University College London
Christian Mueller-Tomfelde, CSIRO
Miguel Nacenta, University of St. Andrews
Anne Marie Piper, University of California, San Diego
Jochen (Jeff) Rick, Saarland University
Yvonne Rogers, Open University
Sriram Subramanian, Bristol University
Hong Tan, Purdue University / Microsoft Research Asia
Frederic Vernier, Universite Paris-Sud
Daniel Vogel, University of Waterloo