CHI 2025 – Papers track, post-PC outcomes report

Overall Acceptance Rates

Of the initial 5,014 completed submissions, the CHI 2025 Program Committee has conditionally accepted 1,249 submissions. The overall acceptance rate for the Papers track was 24.9% of completed submissions. Of the submissions that were revised and resubmitted, 64.6% were accepted.

Of the initial completed submissions (including desk-rejected papers), the overall acceptance rate for “short” submissions (under 5,000 words) was 7.8% (37 out of 473 completed submissions). The overall acceptance rate was 27.0% (1,198 out of 4,444 completed submissions) for “standard” submissions (between 5,000 and 12,000 words). In addition, there was an overall acceptance rate of 22.6% (14 out of 62 completed submissions) for “excessively long” submissions (over 12,000 words).

Acceptance Rates By Subcommittee

Submissions to the CHI Papers track are made to one of eighteen subcommittees. These subcommittees have a topic focus (e.g., Health, Design, User Experience). In our previous blog post, we discussed submission rates and the distribution of first-round rejections (X1) and revise and resubmits (RR). The final range of acceptance rates were between 18.4% (Games & Play) and 32% (Specific Application Areas). Figure 1 shows the acceptance rates for each subcommittee.

Figure 1: Acceptance rates by subcommittee for CHI 2025 papers.

If we further examine the acceptance rates across the subcommittees, we see that the Games & Play subcommittee had the lowest acceptance rate of 18.4%, followed by User Experience (19%) and Computational Interaction (21%). Furthermore, Accessibility (30.8%), Critical Computing (31.1%), and Specific Application Areas (32%) had the highest acceptance rates. Table 1 provides an overview of the number of submissions and the respective acceptance rates for the various subcommittees.

Next, considering the completed revised and resubmitted papers, Figure 2 shows the number of submissions in each subcommittee that were either conditionally accepted (A2) or rejected (X2).

Figure 2: Number of revised and resubmitted submissions in each subcommittee with decision for CHI 2025.

Figure 3 and Table 2 below show the analysis for the revised and resubmitted (R&R) articles along with the decision, i.e., conditional acceptance (A2) and rejection (X2), across the different subcommittees. The lowest acceptance rates for R&R were within the Games & Play (51.7%), Privacy (58.5%), and User Experience (58.5%) subcommittees. However, the highest acceptance rates for R&R were within the Visualization (70.8%), Understanding People (Qualitative) (71.4%), and Specific Application Areas (77.4%) subcommittees.

Figure 3: Acceptance rates by subcommittee when considering only revised and resubmitted papers for CHI 2025.

Reviewer Recommendations

Each paper in the CHI Papers track receives recommendations from reviewers (including 1AC, 2AC, and external reviewers). Although these recommendations may resemble scores, they are not actually scores. As a result, we cannot analyze the mean scores for different submissions. However, we can examine the mix of recommendations received for each submission and visualize how they correlate with the final decision. In particular, do all accepted papers have a “clean sweep” of recommendations for acceptance? Or, what is the mix of recommendations for rejected submissions? Figure 4 visualizes these patterns for revised and resubmitted (R&R) submissions that received final recommendations—as either accept or reject—from four reviewers.

Figure 4: Cumulative reviewer recommendations for papers invited to revise and resubmit to CHI 2025 that received four recommendations.

Not all revised and resubmitted papers received four recommendations from four reviewers (1AC, 2AC, and two external reviewers), including (a) 11 submissions that received two final recommendations, (b) 135 submissions that received three final recommendations, (c) 137 submissions that received five final recommendations, and (d) 2 submissions that received six final recommendations. Figure 5 illustrates the distribution of reviewer recommendations for papers that received five recommendations for the revised and resubmitted papers. These submissions correspond to cases where a 3AC was brought in to assist in decision making or when a conflict arose. Moreover, Table 3 highlights submissions (which were revised and resubmitted) that did not receive four reviewer recommendations.

Figure 5: Cumulative reviewer recommendations for papers invited to revise and resubmit to CHI 2025 that received five recommendations. These submissions correspond to cases where a 3AC was brought in to assist in decision making or when a conflict arose.

Authors of Accepted Papers

For all submissions that were reviewed (excluding desk rejections), we examined the institutions and countries in which the authors are based. We looked only at the institutions and countries of the first author of each submission for the sake of simplicity.

Table 4 shows the breakdown of reviewed submissions and the overall acceptance rates by country, based on the institution of the first author only.