The TOCHI journal continues to strive for greater heights.
And in recent events, as an institution it has grown far wiser as well.
Because I am happy to report that four illustrious new members have graciously accepted my invitation to serve on the Editorial Board:
— Pourang P. Irani (University of Manitoba);
http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~irani/
— Per Ola Kristensson (University of Cambridge);
— Wendy E. Mackay (Université de Paris-Sud); and
— Albrecht Schmidt (University of Stuttgart).
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/en/institute/people/prof-dr-albrecht-schmidt.html
Each of them are accomplished innovators, lecturers, and researchers—if not a force of nature in their own right—and I’m very excited for the vision and guidance they will all bring to the board. And these reinforcements arrive just in time, too, as TOCHI is on a record pace for new submissions this year, with manuscript #155 having just entered the queue as of mid-July.
And that doesn’t even count the revisions.
So needless to say, there’s plenty of editorial work to go around. Our average response time continues to hew to about 50 days, although admittedly this obscures a highly bimodal distribution: we decline many submissions within a few days, while those that go through full external reviews usually take longer. We strive to issue a decision letter within 90 days, but that isn’t always possible—especially during the summer, when almost all prospective reviewers (somehow having the gall to enjoy their sunny holidays) tend make themselves rather scarce!
And if your manuscript has been with us for more than 90 days, please do feel free to query tochi@acm.org so that we can check on its status. Such queries, when necessary, often constitute a useful prod to stir reviewers and editors (including myself!) to imminent action.
Perhaps now is also a good time to remind everyone, oh ye of the faithful TOCHI readership, that 2016 will herald the first annual TOCHI Best Paper Award. We expect to make our selection(s) in early 2017, with all papers published in Volume 23 being eligible. I would love to receive your nominations for our best papers published in 2016, to be sure they receive full due consideration for the award. Just drop us a line at tochi@acm.org. And please do include a brief statement as to why you think the paper is especially deserving—that may be just the thing necessary to push it over the top, given the consistent excellence of all the work that we publish.