Short Paper

Table of Contents

    Info at a Glance

    • Submissions are due on June 10th, 2025, AoE (June 11th, 2025, 14:00 CEST).
    • Submissions can be up to 6 pages long (excluding references).
    • 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 Short Papers – Theme “Digital Diversity”

    The Short Paper track provides the Mensch und Computer community with an opportunity to present new and exciting contributions that showcase innovative technologies, extend prior research conversations, detail short self-contained studies, or provide provocations for new work and ideas to emerge. We welcome submissions around a diversity of topics and methodologies. Examples might include:

    • An original and innovative technology, technique, or prototype with or without an accompanying evaluation
    • A short qualitative or quantitative study with a complete analysis
    • A “sequel” to a prior research contribution
    • A “prequel” to motivate or provoke novel conversations or future work
    • A theoretical or methodological contribution that provokes novel conversations for the discipline

    We encourage all members of the Mensch und Computer community and newcomers to submit Short Papers to elicit useful feedback, foster discussions, and share valuable and original ideas at the conference.

    All Short Papers are formally reviewed and published and, as such, are archival publications.

    Important Dates

    All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. Check your local time in AoE.

    Paper Submission: June 10th, 2025, AoE (June 11th, 2025, 14:00 CEST)

    Decision Notification: July 8th, 2025, AoE (July 9th, 2025, 14:00 CEST)

    Camera-Ready Deadline: July 29th, 2025, AoE (June 30th, 2025, 14:00 CEST)

    Preparing Your Short Paper Submission

    A Short Paper must be submitted via the PCS Submission System. The submission must have a paper, and can include an optional appendix.

    • Paper. The primary submission material consists of an extended abstract in the ACM templates (single column; up to 6 pages, excluding references).
    • Information that is essential to the understanding of the paper (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis, etc.) has to be included in the main part of the paper and will count towards the page limit.
    • An optional appendix in the paper file can include further information for illustrative purposes.
    • Supplementary material files can be provided via ZIP upload. The materials are not part of the main text and not needed to understand it but may provide additional details, e.g., for replication, may be included in the supplementary material part (not in the main paper). As such, these do not count toward the page limit.
    • Papers can be submitted either in English or in German. 

    Please keep in mind that reviewers are not expected to have to check the appendix and supplementary material to get a good understanding of the potential study, analysis, or results.

    Metadata Integrity

    All submission metadata, including required fields in PCS like author names, affiliations, and order, must be complete and correct by the submission deadline.  This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation.  No changes to metadata after this deadline will be allowed.

    Accessibility 

    Authors are expected to follow SIGCHI’s Guide to an Accessible Submission. If you have any 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 marginalized groups, particularly around gender and disability.

    Anonymity

    All submissions need to be fully anonymized. 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’ve 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-maleficence), 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 GPT, must be clearly marked where such tools are used for purposes beyond editing the author’s own 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

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

    • Contribution/Importance of the Short 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 of your Short Paper

    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 one. Papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library and the GI Library. Please see the detailed author instructions.

    Authors of accepted submissions will receive feedback on changes to be made to their Short Papers for the publication-ready deadline. 

    Video Previews

    Authors of accepted submissions will be asked to submit a 30-second video preview summarizing the paper; this is optional but highly encouraged, as it will increase the visibility of the work before and at the conference, and in the ACM digital library in perpetuity. See the Camera Ready Instructions. Keep in mind the deadline for submitting your video preview.

    At the Conference

    For each accepted submission, at least one author must register for the full conference. Authors will have to present their synchronously in-person with a poster 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 English.

    Poster/Video Presentations

    Authors can decide to present their work either in person with a poster or remotely with a video. Authors will be assigned a day and time to present their poster/video to conference attendees. At least one author must be attending the conference either in-person, presenting their poster, or remotely, answering questions to their video. Posters/videos should include (1) the title, authors’ names, and affiliations, (2) a concise overview of the research, (3) clear illustrations of key aspects of the Short Papers, and (4) a compelling visual design. Posters/videos might also include QR codes to link to online materials (e.g., scenario videos, and interactive prototypes). At the conference, no power outlets, or any audiovisual/competing equipment will be provided for the poster presentations. Videos will be played on-site through a public display. Videos should be 3 minutes.

    After the Conference

    Accepted Short Papers will be distributed in the Mensch und Computer Conference Proceedings available in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide. Video presentations of accepted Papers will be archived in the ACM Digital Library and YouTube.