uist-review-process

UIST Review Process

Understanding how UIST decides is mostly understanding who decides: a program

committee of people who build interactive systems, supported by external reviewers

drawn from the same community, converging in discussion and a PC meeting. The venue

is single-track and relatively intimate — the person reviewing your haptics paper

probably built a haptics device. The pipeline facts below are the 2026 cycle's

(verified 2026-07-08); exact committee mechanics beyond the published dates are

待核实 each year.

The 2026 pipeline

| Stage | 2026 timing | What happens to your paper |

|---|---|---|

| Submission closes | Mar 31 | PDF + video + supplement enter PCS |

| Review period | April-May | PC members and externals review paper and video |

| Rebuttal | May 28 - Jun 5 | Authors respond in ≤ 5,000 characters |

| Discussion + PC meeting | June | Recommendations formed from submission, rebuttal, reviews, and reviewer/PC discussion |

| Notification | Jun 27 | Accept (conditional), or reject |

| Camera-ready | Jul 24 | Conditions from the rebuttal must be delivered |

Two structural notes: the decision explicitly weighs the rebuttal and the

inter-reviewer discussion, so the rebuttal is a real instrument (see

uist-author-response); and acceptances are conditional — the notification is a

contract whose terms you wrote yourself in the rebuttal.

How systems reviewers actually read

• Video first, skeptically. The initial question is "does this thing exist and

work as claimed?" A missing video for a highly dynamic system starts the review

from doubt.

• Novelty as capability delta. Reviewers pattern-match against the systems

canon; the related-work table is where they check whether you know it (see

uist-related-work).

• Implementation as competence signal. Vague engineering prose reads as either

concealment or shallow work; specific parameters and honest failure boundaries

read as craft.

• Evaluation-matching, not evaluation-maximizing. A ritual study annoys

reviewers more than a well-argued demonstration portfolio (see

uist-experiments).

• Enthusiasm is a real variable. UIST reviewers reward inventiveness; a

technically modest but genuinely delightful idea can outscore a heavy but dull

one. Write and film for the builder's grin.

Reading your reviews

Sort every reviewer point into one of four bins before reacting:

FACTUAL ERROR      reviewer misread a mechanism/number  -> correct, citing section
EVIDENCE GAP       claim outruns measurement            -> concede scope or add data
NOVELTY CHALLENGE  "system X already does this"         -> capability-delta answer
TASTE              "I would have built it differently"  -> acknowledge, do not litigate

The bins predict rebuttal leverage: factual errors and novelty challenges are

winnable in 5,000 characters; evidence gaps are winnable only if the evidence

already exists; taste is never winnable and costs characters.

Discussion dynamics in a small committee

Between rebuttal and notification, your paper's fate is a conversation you cannot

attend. What is knowable about that phase shapes what you should have done earlier:

• Reviews converge through discussion; a champion reviewer arguing from your

rebuttal's specifics is the mechanism by which mixed reviews become accepts.

The rebuttal's job is to arm that champion (see uist-author-response).

• Expertise is uneven by design — a paper spanning fabrication and ML gets one

deep expert per half; the review that "missed the point" often belongs to the

other half's expert, and answering it teaches the whole committee.

• Single-track scale means PC members see a broad slice of the year's

submissions; "we saw three of these this cycle" is a real dynamic, and a crisp

capability delta is the defense.

• Scores move at the meeting. Borderline papers with concrete, deliverable

rebuttal promises are cheap accepts; borderline papers with defensive rebuttals

are cheap rejects.

Calibrating expectations by decision class

| Outcome signal | What it usually means | Your move |

|---|---|---|

| Conditional accept, short condition list | Committee wants the paper; conditions are the contract | Deliver precisely; see uist-camera-ready |

| Reject, reviews ask for more evaluation | Evidence gap — repairable in one cycle | Repair plan from the review bins |

| Reject, reviews dispute novelty | Related-work or delta failure | Fix positioning before anything else |

| Reject, reviews question the contribution's home | Venue mismatch | Re-run uist-topic-selection honestly |

After rejection: the three exits

1. Adjunct fallback, same conference. A rejected paper's system is often a

strong Demo or Poster submission to the same edition — the adjunct deadlines

fall after paper notification. This keeps the work visible, collects hallway

review, and stakes a dated adjunct publication. Remember the 2026 rule: one

adjunct track per work, not both.

1. Repair and resubmit to UIST next year: use the review bins as the work plan;

evidence-gap rejections are the most repairable class.

1. Re-route when reviews reveal a venue mismatch — "the contribution is the

study, not the system" is a CHI/CSCW signal, and uist-topic-selection should be

re-run rather than argued with.

Confidentiality and conduct

Reviews, reviewer identities, and PC discussion are confidential; do not quote

reviews publicly or attempt reviewer identification. Contact the program chairs

(program2026@uist.org for the 2026 cycle) only for process failures — a genuinely

missing review, a compromised anonymity situation — not to relitigate scores.

Output format

[Phase] under review / rebuttal / decided-conditional / decided-reject
[Review bins] factual <n> · evidence <n> · novelty <n> · taste <n>
[Leverage estimate] rebuttal-winnable points and why
[If rejected] adjunct fallback / repair-resubmit / re-route — with the deciding review line
[Process flags] <anything warranting a chairs contact>