Shumin Zhai’s farewell editorial is now live in the ACM Digital Library.
As our departing Editor-in-Chief, he reports on the remarkable improvements he effected for the TOCHI journal’s operation, including a much brisker pace of handling submissions (now averaging less than 50 days).
He also initiated electronic-first publication of accepted TOCHI papers, which greatly reduces the end-to-end pipeline for our authors to reveal their exciting new results to the world.
Under Shumin’s leadership there were also tremendous strides in enhancing the journal’s impact, such as inviting authors of accepted papers to speak at CHI and other leading SIGCHI conferences. He grew the journal from 4 issues per year to 6, and doubled the amount of content TOCHI publishes overall — all while maintaining the journal’s reputation for a fair and rigorous review cycle. His efforts have pushed key metrics, such as downloads per article, into to the upper echelon of ACM Transactions-level journals.
The net results of all these initiatives have further elevated TOCHI’s stature as the flagship journal of the Computer-Human Interaction community.
But with his six years of service at an end, and his maximum allowable two terms as Editor-in-chief completed with distinction, he now receives the greatest award of all:
Shumin gets his life back (grin).
And so the ACM Publications Board, with Shumin’s enthusiastic support, has appointed his successor:
Ken Hinckley, a long-time associate editor for TOCHI and a leading researcher in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), becomes the journal’s fifth Editor-in-Chief.
Ken is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, and also a member of the CHI Academy. He has served as Technical Program Chair for CHI, papers chair for UIST and MobileHCI, and on the editorial boards of other leading journals such as the HCI Journal.
He is perhaps best known for his work on mobile sensing, pen (and touch) interaction, and interaction techniques that combine multiple modalities (and sensors) in new ways. You can learn more about him, and follow his work, from his research blog.
But Ken also prides himself on being a generalist, both in terms of topic and research approach, and in recent months nothing excites him more than finding a promising TOCHI submission that has just come in over the transom. He hopes to find one of yours there soon.
So be sure to check out Shumin’s closing remarks — words of wisdom as always — and the next issue of TOCHI (Volume 23, Issue 1) will feature Ken’s introductory editorial discussing where things stand for TOCHI as well as some new initiatives in the works.
But rest assured that the new editorial team has redoubled the journal’s commitment to timely and professional responses, with a never-ending attention to thoughtful and rigorous reviews.
We fully intend to build on and hopefully expand even futher the great successes and impact that Shumin paved the way for when he firmly took the reins of TOCHI in his able hands.
Ken Hinckley
Editor-in-Chief