Papers and Notes

Round 2 open for new submissions

As of 20th March 2016, we noted that we had been receiving a significant number of requests from authors who wish to submit full papers to AfriCHI, but had missed the round 1 submission deadline. This being an inaugural conference, some interested authors had only received word of AfriCHI after the submission deadline of 10^th February 2016. Given our interest in promoting HCI in, from and about Africa, we have decided to open the 2^nd round of Paper and Note submissions to new submissions.

This means that papers and notes not submitted in the first round can now submit in the second round without doing the 2-round review process. The submission platform for new submissions will open on 14th April 2016, and close on 27th April 2016.

For fairness however, new papers submitted in the second round will undergo a rigorous accept-reject review process, compared to those submitted in the first round which are undergoing a two-round review process. The two-round review process is tailored to considerably improve papers rather than only judge them.

About Papers and Notes

AfriCHI Papers and Notes are original, peer-reviewed, scholarly accounts of research and/or practice in any aspect of relationships between people and digital technology/media. Papers and notes are published in the conference proceedings. Papers and notes will have a maximum of 10 and 4 pages respectively, excluding any references with a minimum of 20 references for papers and 10 references for notes. Papers and notes will be more widely accessed via a prestige online archive. At the conference, authors will orally communicate their work. Selection aims to ensure Papers and Notes will have broad impact on developing HCI in Africa and overseas and, thus, AfriCHI uses a two-round review process. This also means that Papers that do not meet expectations can be revised to be Notes.

Deadline for all Papers and Notes to Round 1 review: Extended to Wednesday 10 February 2016

Notification of outcome of Round 1 review: Wednesday 30 March 2016

Submission deadline for Round 2 : Wednesday 27 April 2016

Notification of conditional acceptance: Wednesday 8 June 2016

Camera-ready final deadline: Wednesday 13 July 2016

Objectives

Authors of paper and notes’ present their original work at the conference and as a detailed scholarly account in the conference proceedings. We aim that AfriCHI papers and notes will increase international recognition and participation of Africans in HCI/Interaction design scholarship and practice. Thus, we invite submissions from people who are African, based in Africa, or undertake projects for, about or with Africa/Africans.

We aim that AfriCHI papers and notes advance HCI topics in relation to African contexts or perspectives; however, this relation does not need to be the central topic. Simply, authors should consider how the topic, such as those in the list below, is relevant to African people, or places, events, processes, phenomena, languages, experiences, meanings, values, livelihoods or aesthetics in Africa etc. Topics include, but are not limited to:

Understanding technology users
User experience (UX) or usability
Teaching, learning, educating or developing HCI/Interaction Design capacity
Applying HCI in NGOs, grass-roots collectives, government or start-ups
Mobile HCI or “Ubiquitous computing”
HCI and specific domains e.g. health and medical informatics
HCI for Development (HCI4D) or Interaction Design for Developing Regions
Critique or analysis of any methodology/method/process/tool/theory/model in HCI
Engaging indigenous or traditional knowledge in HCI/design
Local languages and/or orality and HCI/design
Afro-centric media, design, theory or invention
Science, technology and society (STS) studies in Africa and the global South
Empirical studies and fieldwork related to technology
Participatory design or co-design
Case studies related to technology
Theoretical approaches or conceptual tools for human-centred design
Ethical issues in HCI/interaction design
HCI for multi-user interaction or Computer supported co-operative work (CSCW)
HCI and diversity e.g. transnationals, children etc.,
HCI and accessibility e.g. disabled people, rural dwellers etc.,
Reflections on cross-cultural or international collaboration in HCI
Globalisation and technology production e.g. multi-national and outsourcing, raw mineral trades
Transdisciplinarity and relationships between academic disciplines that relate to HCI
Post-colonial computing
Fun or Aesthetic Design
Open source development and/or decentralised telecommunications e.g. maker cultures, mesh networks
Local content or Web 2.0 applications
Usable privacy and security
HCI and enterprise and organisational issues
HCI and sustainability
Envisioning and exploring future technologies and contexts of use
Design issues, methods or experiences for emerging technologies e.g. Big Data, Quantified Self, Internet of Things, NUIs, etc.

Difference between Paper and Notes

AfriCHI Paper and Notes make the same general types of contributions but differ in scope. Papers are 10 pages or less and Notes are 4 pages or less, excluding references. References should be a minimum of 20 for papers and 10 for notes. Notes present brief and focused research contributions that are noteworthy, but may not be as comprehensive with respect to results or analysis, as a full paper. For example, Notes on applications may not cover the entire iterative design cycle but may, instead, go into depth in specific area of, say, observation, design, implementation or evaluation, etc. Notes are not expected to include a discussion of related work that is as broad and complete as that of a Paper.

Mentoring

We warmly encourage less experienced authors to benefit from the assistance of mentors in preparing papers or notes. Assistance includes guiding on content and/or format of submissions and/or help to address comments in reviews and prepare camera-ready final versions. Mentors are not anonymous and will not be involved in formally reviewing the submission or in acceptance to AfriCHI. Please contact the Mentoring Chairs by 3 January 2016 if you are interested in mentoring or being mentored on a paper/note before submission, bearing in mind the earlier we can assign a mentor the more support we can offer.

Independently of mentoring, AfriCHI’16 applies a revise and resubmit process to Papers and Notes to ensure a broad range of high quality papers and notes. To understand this two-round process, please read information on reviewing and selection, below, carefully and ensure you upload your Paper or Note to the online submission system by the first submission deadline.

Paper and Notes Submissions

Please upload your paper or note to the online submission system. If you have any questions about formatting or uploading submissions, please contact submissions at africhi dot net. Both papers and notes must be original and cannot be published or currently under review elsewhere. Papers are up to 10 pages, excluding any references and should contain a minimum of 20 references. Notes are up to 4 pages or less, excluding references and it should contain a minimum of 10 references. Your paper or note must reflect appropriate ethical practices, including all issues relating to participants’ or subjects’ privacy, intellectual property, personal/sensitive information.

Content

For both papers and notes abbreviations should be defined the first time they appear in your text. Example: HEA (Higher Education Area), before being used as an abbreviation only. Please, do not define or use abbreviations in the title. Please avoid complex mathematical formulas. For the symbols ≤ or ≥, type instead =. Papers should be well-written and use English language; however we do not restrict this to UK or American English. Rather, we encourage authors to use language that feels comfortable to them and to include local language terms if these improve meaning. For clarity, we expect authors to include a preface in English to explain their use of language and clarification within the main text or in additional footnotes, of non-English meanings or use of local idioms or phrasings. For example, the first of “sawa” in a Kenyan paper might include a parenthetical remark or footnote defining “sawa” as “okay”. For further questions or clarifications about language, please refer to the main Languages and Mentoring page or contact the Languages chairs: language at africhi dot net.

Your submission must be anonymised to permit double-blind peer-review by program committee members.Please ensure that the reviewers will be able to read and understand your paper without having to know who you are.

Firstly, do not include your names and institutions anywhere in the document and omit acknowledgements – you will add these into your final camera-ready version.

Secondly, ensure that the author(s) name/s or institution/s do not appear in the document properties (File… Info… Inspect Document or File… Properties).

Finally, so that reviewers take into account all prior, related (or background) work relevant to your paper, you should not anonymise the references to your own work. However, when citing your own work please refer to these contributions in third person. For example, rather than “We extend our prior work [5]..” you might say “We extend Awori’s prior work [5]…”.

We seek to encourage excellent referencing practices in order to contribute to advancing HCI. Referencing with the greatest potential to advance knowledge includes illustrating the relevance and value of African action, research, theory, innovation and intellectual products to discourse in HCI, and allied fields. Thus, we adopt the CHI’16 guidelines for referencing that discourage overly selective citation due to constraints on the length of manuscripts (see below). Examples of the most common reference types formatted for ACM are in lower half of the page available at: http://www.acm.org/publications/submissions/latex_style.

As well as printed publications these include online document/WWW resources, and video. Examples of a video citations include:

[1] Dave Novak. 2003. Solder man. Video. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2003 Video Review on Animation theater Program: Part I – Vol. 145 (July 27-27, 2003). ACM Press, New York, NY, 4. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/99.9999/woot07-S422

[2] Barack Obama. 2008. A more perfect union. Video. (5 March 2008). Retrieved March 21, 2008 from http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6528042696351994555

A performed orature or other spoken public communication, such as a keynote (e.g. [3]) can be cited. For example, an author might write: “As Mandela said, “Our road to that glorious future lies through collective hard work to accomplish the objective of creating a people-centred society …” [4]”

The reference should use a descriptor that appropriately expresses the type of speech (e.g., Address, Keynote Speech) and be formatted in the references as follows:

Speaker’s name, (year), Title of the speech (if any) in italics. Type of speech. Name of the occasion and organization (if any). Date in parentheses. Location of the occasion.
[4] Nelson R Mandela, 1994. State of the Nation Address by President of South Africa. Address. South African Parliament. (23 May 1994) Cape Town. Western Cape. South Africa

Private communications should be acknowledged in the main text, not referenced (e.g., “[Borriello, personal communication]”). Papers, Notes, Posters and Gumzo Pictorials are double-blind reviewed, so text in your initial submission must not make it explicit that a citation refers to your own material.

Format & Template

All submissions must follow the CHI Proceedings format. We suggest you download the template in Word and replace the text with your content. We will not accept LaTeX formatted papers.

Link to the template: http://africhi.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SIGCHIPaperFormat.docx

We will not accept Papers or Notes that exceed the prescribed number of pages. References do not count towards the page limit. This follows CHI’16 guidelines that aim to discourage overly selective citation. Thus, the main content pages of Papers should be 10 pages or less and Notes should be 4 pages or less. Any additional pages should only contain references. The main content pages of Papers and Notes includes the title, (anonymised) author list, an abstract of up to 150 words, all the body text, figures, tables, and any appendices.

Reviewing & Selection

AfriCHI’16 applies a revise and resubmit process to papers and notes. This involves two rounds of reviews, Round 1 and Round 2. We kindly advise authors that two-round review is not for submitting draft manuscripts, and that Papers and Notes reviewed in Round 1 must be complete submissions. Authors who require assistance in preparing Papers or Notes for review should consider participating in the mentoring process described above, which is completely independent of reviewing and selecting papers for AfriCHI.

Round 1

Submissions of papers and notes received by 3 February 2016 are refereed in Round 1 double-blind, peer-reviews according to many similar criteria, with some important differences. Papers and Notes are assessed for: value and relevance to African contexts or perspectives AND to HCI; quality of presentation; coherence and integrity of scholarly argument, originality and importance of the contribution.

A primary criterion for acceptance is that a Paper or Note contributes to the field of HCI in Africa or for Africans. Since Notes are briefer, this contribution may not be as in-depth as a Paper. There are many ways that a Paper or Note can contribute to the field of HCI in Africa or for Africans, such as breaking new ground or presenting original research or insights with relevance to Africa or considering the implications of a HCI theory or practice for Africa.

Content in a Paper or Note should be new and not contain material that has been previously published unless it has been “significantly” revised or was previously in a language other than English. In the ACM Policies on Pre-Publication Evaluation and Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions guidelines for determining “significance” of a revision a significant revision contains in excess of 25% new content (e.g. new insights or results, etc.) and markedly amplifies/clarifies the original material.

Additionally, work that was previously presented or published in a language other than English may be translated and published in English at AfriCHI; however the original author should also be the author (or co-author) of work translated into English and the new presentation should clearly indicate it is a translation. For more information see: http://www.sigchi.org/conferences.

Papers and Notes are also assessed on their coverage of literature. We strongly encourage contributions that cite African works, within and beyond HCI/Interaction design, along with citing the background or related literature that is typically associated with a topic. Papers are expected to have more comprehensive literature than notes.

All authors will receive notification of the outcome on 30 March 2016 and detailed reports by independent reviewers, that have been consolidated by a meta-reviewer overseeing that submission. Reports in Round 1 will indicate the paper or note’s strengths and weaknesses, recommend improvements and specify areas that must be addressed for the paper/note to be considered for acceptance to AfriCHI’16. For Notes there are two possible outcomes of Round 1 reviews and for Papers there are three possible outcomes.

The notifications sent to authors of Notes on 30 March 2016 will be a confirmed rejection or an invitation to resubmit the note for a second round of reviewing (Round 2). Authors of notes that are eligible for Round 2 review must revise the note according to the reviewers reports. Authors receiving a confirmed rejection should consider whether they can re-frame some of the material in a Poster for submission to the Poster track.

The notifications sent to authors of Papers on 30 March 2016 will be a confirmed rejection or an invitation to either resubmit the paper or revise the paper into a note for a second round of reviewing (Round 2). Authors of papers that are eligible for Round 2 review must revise the paper according to the reviewers report and depending on the notification, resubmit it as a paper or note. Authors of papers that are invited to submit a note instead should now revise their paper into a note for Round 2 reviewing.

Round 2

Authors receiving invitations to resubmit a paper or note or revise a paper into a note should resubmit their manuscripts, revised according to the reviewers’ reports, by 27 April 2016. Authors who submitted a paper and received an invitation to revise and submit it as a note should carefully attend to separate criteria for Notes. The same meta-reviewer responsible for reviewing the initial submission will co-ordinate Round 2 reviews of the paper or note. Often notes that were originally submitted as paper will be reviewed by the same independent peer-reviewers that reviewed the earlier paper.

All authors submitting Papers or Notes to Round 2 will receive notification of the outcome on 8 June 2016 and further reports by reviewers. Notification sent to authors of Papers or Notes in Round 2 will be a confirmed rejection or a conditional acceptance.

Along with a conditional acceptance authors will also receive information to guide them in preparing and submitting the final, camera-ready version of the paper or note. Authors of papers or notes that are conditionally accepted must attend carefully to the reviewers’ reports, revise their manuscripts accordingly and submit this version by 13 July 2016. Provided the final version of the paper or note conforms to all requirements, including those on copyright and ethical publication, and one author of the paper or note registers for AfriCHI then the paper will appear in the proceedings. A member of the program committee will check the final version of each note to confirm it meets publication requirements and, if so, will finalise acceptance. If a paper or note does not meet publication requirements by the camera-ready deadline then we may omit it from the programme.

Round 2 open for new submissions

This means that papers and notes not submitted in the first round can now submit in the second round without doing the 2-round review process. The submission platform for new submissions will open on 14th April 2016, and close on 27th April 2016.

Presenting at AfriCHI’16

At least one author of accepted submissions must present at AfriCHI’16 conference. Each presentation will last 20 minutes in an assigned thematic session. You will be informed of your session reference and the time of your presentation about 4 weeks before the event. If your personal circumstances restrict you to presenting your paper on a specific date, please send us an email with your request as soon as possible.