PAPER REVIEW PROCESS AT CSCW 2026 AND FAQ

TL;DR

• CSCW has been facing many challenges in the past several years. If we do not make changes, our peer review process will not be sustainable.
• Therefore, we have made adjustments to our peer review process outlined in the Call for Papers, including:
• Introducing Senior Program Committee
• The SPC will consist of those who have extensive experience in the CSCW community in terms of both being the lead or supervising author on publications and having been an AC several times. There will no longer be an editor role.
• Adding two online Program Committee meetings
• There will be 2 PC meetings to support mentoring, discussion, and calibration. One PC meeting will be for the Assisted Desk Reject phase, and the other will be for the Resubmission of papers that received a Revise for External Review recommendation.
• Refining Desk Rejects/Assisted Desk Rejects phase:
• It is similar to a journal process where the senior editor and associate editor provide an in-depth reading that can determine whether the paper is ready to go to external review. This saves external reviewer time if the paper is not ready and does not go out to review at this time.
• Refining External Review cycle
• We take a tiered approach to reviewing where externals will not need to review papers that are not ready. We introduce a 4 week revision cycle before papers go out to external review so that issues the senior program committee member (SPC) and program committee member (PC) point out can be fixed, leaving external reviewers to spend their time reviewing a paper closer to being acceptable.
• Given the paper will have already undergone a round of revision focused on the major concerns of the SPC and PC, we anticipate many more papers will be acceptable after the initial external review round (i.e., November 11, 2025) than in past years. As a result, many papers should not require all rounds of revision and will be accepted much earlier (i.e., by November 11, 2025).
• We also include a list of FAQs in this blog post.

For CSCW 2026, we have made adjustments to our peer review process outlined in the Call for Papers. In developing this year’s process, we have consulted with the CSCW Steering committee, 2025 and 2027 General and Papers Chairs, various members of the 2025 organizing committee, and solicited feedback from several senior members of the community. This has allowed us to uncover and prioritize many issues. We have also looked at peer review processes at other conferences and journals to inform our thinking about alternative structures and options. Below we explain the motivation behind making these adjustments.

Our community has experienced a huge rate of growth over the last several years and the number of paper submissions has sharply increased. At the same time, a number of factors have made it extremely difficult to sustain a high-quality peer review process. Some of these:

• The loss of Program Committee (PC) meetings. In the past, Associate Chairs (ACs) met together as a program committee to discuss and make decisions on paper decisions. 1ACs would present the paper and share the reasons for accept (or reject), as well as uncertainties. The whole committee would council together and share/establish norms of publishable research. Drawing on collective memory, many years of experience, and diverse expertise, this process enabled us to support newer ACs and provide mentorship. PC meetings also served as a tool of accountability since ACs presented their recommendations to their professional community. 1ACs were incentivised to make sure their paper accept/reject recommendation was well supported by knowledgeable reviewers and their own informed and careful read of the manuscript. 2ACs conducted responsible reviews of their papers since they would have to engage in discussion and defend their recommendation at the PC meeting. PC meetings disappearing has led to many downstream impacts in recent years, including:
• Many would-be ACs are not serving on the program committee since there is no longer the benefit of attending a PC meeting, receiving mentorship, and building other social capital. The review load is enormous and must be completed in a relatively short amount of time—without strong incentives, it is hard to recruit experienced ACs.
• We now have many more inexperienced ACs serving who are familiar with a smaller range of research paradigms, and also have smaller social networks and experience knowing who to invite as reviewers—the reviewer match and expertise are not always appropriate. They also do not have as much insight into handling reviews and discussions.
• Despite providing AC trainings and detailed manuals, simple best practices are not always being followed (e.g., making sure your reviewers are not all from the same institution, making sure there is a methods expert as well as a domain expert).
• Every submission cycle we end up with a small handful of ACs who, without warning, become non-responsive (this is after they have agreed to serve and have been assigned papers). This is often discovered once we are close to or at the deadline for reviews and no reviews have come in because the AC has not been following up. Each disappearing AC impacts about 10 papers—this has a huge ripple effect.
• In recent years, we introduced and continually increased the number of editors who oversee ACs and their papers. They spend an enormous amount of time each overseeing 100+ papers to try to catch and find solutions to these issues. For example, in 2025, editors each oversaw ~150 papers. Despite these efforts, the sheer volume of submissions and the new problems that pop up each submission cycle make it nearly impossible.
• General trend turning down volunteer requests. In addition to it being hard to recruit ACs, reviewers are turning down review requests at a very high rate. Again, this hurts the fit of the reviewer to paper since it can become a quantified metric—the prioritized metric becomes getting the right number of reviewers. Chairs also have to ask many many more people to serve on the organizing committee before they can fill the positions.
• Generative-AI papers and reviews. We are seeing an increase in generative-AI being used in papers and now even reviews written with gen-AI. Since this is allowed by ACM in a very limited way (for grammar checks; this must be done without uploading paper content to the LLM which is a violation of the ACM peer review policy, violates author confidentiality, and is subject to investigation), spotting when this technology is being used inappropriately is increasingly difficult. ACs will need to be better able to judge whether a reviewer’s assertions are relevant or valid.
• Journal-quality papers on a conference review timeline. We now publish papers in the PACMHCI journal. The requirements around the PACMHCI peer review process mirror the values associated with journal papers. Namely, requiring longer and multiple revision cycles for authors to edit their manuscript, with the expectation that additional work can be performed because of this longer timeframe. However, CSCW started as a conference that utilized a conference model peer review structure. We now have a mix of structures and processes that pit different values against each other in a way that is not sustainable. In sum, we are expecting journal quality work and peer review, but on a short conference timeline. A key example of this is that in many journals, a manuscript does not move on in the review process until the authors fix the issues brought up by the current reviewer(s). For example, the paper starts with the senior editor, and when it is ready, goes out to an associate editor for a deep review. The authors then revise and resubmit to satisfy the senior and associate editor that the main issues are resolved, and then external reviewers are invited. Another common process is when one Associate Editor makes an initial decision about whether the paper is ready to go out to external review. The paper is either rejected or goes out to external review. The reject rate is very high (vast majority of papers) in these types of journal processes. There are pros and cons to this approach, but it emphasizes progressively improving the manuscript while limiting redundant reviews that point out the same major flaws. In contrast, our peer review process has followed the conference model where speed is the priority and so all reviews are conducted in parallel (2AC and 2 externals are at the same time, with 1AC also somewhat in parallel, with all 4 reviews coming back at the same time).
• A global community and supporting work-life balance. Because we are a global community and want to support work-life balance, CSCW has recently moved due dates to Tuesday so that we avoid weekends in any time zone. However, much more needs to be done. Currently the schedule is so tight that it is difficult to accommodate any delay—this ends up overburdening volunteers as they jump in and take up many additional tasks beyond their already huge commitments in order to make up the difference so that we can stay on schedule. Major holidays in various countries add additional stress since they are not always accounted for in the schedule. Personal emergencies (such as being sick for two weeks) often also lead to ACs having to discontinue because they can’t meet the timeline.

• Senior Program Committee. Instead of having a dozen editors overseeing one pool of Associate Chairs, we now have a senior program committee (SPC) that serves as 1AC on their papers, and a program committee (PC) that serves as 2AC. The SPC will consist of those who have a lot of experience in the CSCW community in terms of both being the lead or supervising author on publications and having been an AC several times. Each member of the SPC will handle several papers as the 1AC. They will oversee assigning a 2AC from the program committee for each of their papers. We expect Program Committee members to have published at CSCW and related HCI venues as the lead and/or supervising author. Rationale: This essentially moves the editor role into the 1AC spot. It has to be the 1AC who can prevent/spot issues and having more experienced 1ACs facilitates this. However, the SPC will be much bigger than the editor group was since each person can only handle so many papers at a high level of quality.
• Program Committee meetings. Throughout the review process there will be TWO (2) program committee meetings (online) that involve both the SPC and PC so that discussions and mentoring can occur. While having a program committee meeting is not the only way to address many of the issues mentioned above, we feel it makes sense this year. Future chairs will decide whether some sort of PC meeting would make sense once we move to rolling deadlines. Rationale: This allows scholars in the community to be mentored and participate in the discussions processes. They will learn the norms of being a 1AC and eventually be qualified to serve on the SPC at a future date.
• Desk Rejects/Assisted Desk Rejects. SPC members will make initial desk reject decisions, which will be confirmed by another SPC member. Remaining papers will undergo a deep review by the 2AC. If the 1AC and 2AC both feel the paper has too many major issues to fix, then it will be rejected at this point. 1AC and 2AC reviews will go out to authors at the end of these phases and authors will either receive a decision of Reject or Revise for external review. Based on the desk and quick reject rate for CSCW2025, we anticipate that this will be at least a fifth of submitted papers. Rationale: The desk rejects are unchanged. The assisted desk rejects are in following with what is done in other ACM venues and similar to a journal process where the senior editor and associate editor provide an in-depth reading that can determine whether the paper is ready (perhaps with some writing changes) to go to external review. This saves external reviewer time if the paper is not ready and does not go out to review at this time. This is similar to what was known as a Quick Reject in previous years. However, QRs were too cursory in past years, so this year the decision will be made after a full detailed AC review and discussion at a program committee meeting which comes with the benefit of drawing on the collective experiences of both PCs.
• External Review cycle. Authors that receive a Revise for external review will have 4 weeks to revise and resubmit their paper. This revised version will go out to 2 external reviewers. In this cycle, 1AC, 2AC, and externals will discuss the paper and make an Accept with Minor Revisions, Major Revision, or Reject decision. We anticipate that there will be a significant portion of papers that receive Accept with Minor Revisions since the paper will have undergone a round of revision already addressing the ACs’ concerns—we will be encouraging these decisions. Nonetheless, papers where the review team remains uncertain if the paper will be ready for publication can receive a Major Revision. The process for Major Revision and resubmission looks much like the process in previous years. Rationale: Having an initial 4 week revision cycle after AC feedback and before going to external review allows authors to address the major issues that ACs have already identified. This increases the probability that externals will not have to identify the same issues again, but can focus on additional issues they find. This also increases the likelihood that this revised version will be good enough for an Accept with Minor Revision, making the acceptance timeline faster for many papers. However, the Major Revision option also allows a second revised version to be submitted and evaluated so that papers that need another revision (and would have been rejected after the first resubmission in the old process), have that opportunity to be revised one more time and reviewed by the same review team. This cuts down the overhead of having to resubmit as a new paper and getting a new review team that may require multiple more rounds of revision.

Q: Why is the timeline so long?

A: PACM HCI is a journal and thus there are some differences between what authors may be used to compared to a typical CS conference review timeline. Journal papers must offer the opportunity to revise (although a paper can be rejected before they get to this point if the editorial committee feels it is not yet ready). This revision period must be at least 8 weeks for PACMHCI papers. This is a mandatory requirement by the PACMHCI journal. The goal is to refine papers until they are ready for publication, without wasted effort (e.g., 4 reviews all pointing out the same major flaw). Thus, we take a tiered approach to reviewing where externals will not need to review papers that are not ready. We introduce the 4 week revision cycle before papers go out to external review so that issues the senior program committee member (SPC) and program committee member (PC) point out can be fixed, leaving external reviewers to spend their time reviewing a paper closer to being acceptable. This takes more time than sending out a paper for review in parallel, but saves volunteer time and burden. It also increases the chance that papers could be accepted with minor revisions after external review. Given the paper will have already undergone a round of revision focused on the major concerns of the SPC and PC, we anticipate many more papers will be acceptable after the initial external review round than in past years (i.e., November 11, 2025). As a result, many papers should not require all rounds of revision and will be accepted much earlier (i.e., November 11, 2025). Papers that need more rounds of revision will be able to have them.

Additionally, as explained earlier in this blog post, we see the significant value of Program Committee (PC) meetings for bringing the community together to calibrate and ensure a fair decision making process for each paper. Therefore, we will also hold two virtual PC meetings in the CSCW 2026 paper review process. One will be for the Assisted Desk Reject phase, and the other will be for the Resubmission of papers that received a Revise for External Review recommendation. Planning and holding these PC meetings will add extra time to the paper review process. However, we believe that it is critical to add PC meetings back to CSCW to ensure that we can have fair decisions for every paper as a community effort. As we are an international community, we also carefully worked around holiday schedules in various cultures to help our volunteers avoid working during holidays (e.g., Christmas, Thanksgiving, Lunar New Year).

Q: What is “Revise for External Review”?

A: As explained above, we introduce the 4-week revision cycle before papers go out to external review so that issues the senior program committee member (SPC) and program committee member (PC) the ACs point out can be fixed, leaving external reviewers to spend their time reviewing a paper closer to being acceptable. This takes more time than sending out a paper for review in parallel, but saves volunteer time and burden. It also increases the chance that papers could be accepted with minor revisions after external review. Given the paper will have already undergone a round of revision focused on the major concerns of the SPC and PC members, we anticipate many more papers will be acceptable after the initial external review round than in past years. Many papers should also not require all rounds of revision and will be accepted much earlier.

Q: The CSCW external reviewing period overlaps with the CHI 2026 reviewing process. How will the community manage these overlapping activities?

A: With CSCW’s multi-phase, journal-based reviewing process distributed over many months, some overlap with other major conferences is inevitable. Nonetheless, the reviewing work for CSCW ACs will actually occur before the CHI submission deadline. The overlap is between the CSCW 2026 external review phase and CHI 2026 paper reviewing phase. While this is unfortunate, it is better than in prior years when AC work overlapped between the conferences. External reviewers are usually reviewing fewer papers than ACs. Furthermore, based on prior paper review data, we anticipate that the CSCW tiered review process will result in a substantial reduction in the number of papers requiring external reviews. Moving the external review earlier to avoid overlap would then shorten the amount of time ACs have to review and manage papers. Not having enough time to properly review, make quick reject decisions, and invite externals has been a key source of low quality reviewing and so we have decided not to truncate that timeline.

Q: That is a really long timeline for me to find out if my paper will be Desk Rejected or Assisted Desk Rejected.

A: We have a much shorter timeline for initially identifying desk rejected papers (June 2025), although this can occur later in the process if it is discovered at a later point in time (e.g., sometimes anonymization problems are not initially spotted). Assisted Desk Rejects will also occur fairly early in the timeline (August 2025).

Q: Why are there multiple PC meetings?

A: One PC meeting will be for the Assisted Desk Reject phase, and the other will be for the Resubmission of papers that received a Revise for External Review recommendation. Planning and holding these PC meetings will add extra time to the paper review process. However, we believe that it is critical to add PC meetings back to CSCW to ensure that we can have fair decisions for every paper as a community effort.

Q: How many papers do you expect to go out to external review?

A: We have looked at the data from last year on when papers were accepted or rejected and how. There is extremely high alignment between the ACs recommendations and external reviewer recommendations. Thus, we believe that this modified process will save on superfluous volunteer time by external reviewers, with a fairer process for identifying papers to be rejected at the AC review stage. Projecting last year’s numbers onto the adjusted review process, we can anticipate a paper timeline of:

• ~15%-20% Desk Reject (June 2025)
• ~30% Assisted Desk Reject (August 2025)
• ~50% Go to External Review (Authors notified August 2025, Submit revision Sept 2025)
• ~25% Receive a decision, ~25% Go to final round of Major Revision (Authors notified Nov 2025, Submit revision Jan 2025)

Q: Can I make changes to the author list (such as adding a new author or removing an existing author) after I submitted my paper(s)?

A: As highlighted in the PCS submission form, the author list cannot be edited after the paper submission deadline. Please note that this also applies throughout the paper review process until a final accept/reject decision is made - new authors cannot be introduced for a major revision. CSCW 2026 has this policy to ensure the fairness of our peer review process, such as avoiding potential conflicts of interest that can emerge if new authors are added after the review process has begun. This policy is also consistent with other SIGCHI venues such as CHI, which does not allow such changes after the paper submission deadline.

Q: When will the accepted papers be published in PACM HCI?

A: We anticipate many papers will be acceptable after the initial external review round (i.e., November 11, 2025). We plan to publish these papers in the PACM HCI Spring 2026 issue. Papers that are accepted after Revise and Resubmit (i.e., accepted in March 2026) will be published in the PACM HCI Fall 2026 issue.

Q: What options are there for papers that are rejected after this review process?

A: They can be resubmitted to CSCW 2027 or other HCI venues (e.g., CHI).

Q: When will PCS open for paper submissions?

A: We will usually open the submission system on PCS two weeks before each deadline (submission and revision).

Q: Where/when will be CSCW 2026?

A: CSCW 2026 will be held in the USA in October 2026.

Q: Would CSCW 2026 offer hybrid attendance options?

A: We are certainly considering various attendance options for attendees. We are exploring a wide range of possibilities for how this looks (from live streaming keynotes and panels to asynchronous viewing), but the final decision will largely be shaped by financial constraints and we are unable to project what that will be at this time. Also, attending the conference is not a condition of publication - accepted papers will be published in the PACM HCI journal (where ACM Open Access fees may apply) and conference attendance is a separate decision.