The Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS) track of PACMHCI is the premier publication venue for research on the design, development and use of new and emerging interactive surface technologies and interactive spaces. We welcome original, high-quality research that advances the state-of-the-art for interactive surfaces and spaces and across a wide variety of domains including design, software, hardware, understanding of use, and applications or deployments of such interactive systems.
Contributions on a wide range of topics relating to interactive surfaces and spaces as well as novel interface technologies are welcome, including (but not limited to):
For all accepted papers, regardless of conference attendance, at least one author must register for the ACM ISS 2026 conference in the corresponding author category and pay a registration fee for the work to be published in PACM HCI.
Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access, and all ACM publications will be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 2,700+ institutions already part of ACM Open and with more institutions joining from around the world every week, the majority of submissions to ACM publications will not require APCs from authors.
Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a geographic or discretionary financial hardship waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review the Policy on Geographic APC Waivers and Discounts Policy and the Policy on Discretionary APC Waivers. Keep in mind that discretionary waivers are rare and are granted based on specific criteria set by ACM. Simply sending a message to ACM indicating an inability to pay an APC is typically an insufficient justification for such a waiver. Waivers are based on the specific circumstances of the author(s) requesting the waiver. ACM does take seriously into consideration the institutional affiliation of the authors and whether it is a reasonable expectation that their institution should be joining the ACM Open program. This is necessary for the long-term financial sustainability of the ACM Open model.
To support a smooth transition and encourage broader ACM Open participation, ACM has approved a temporary subsidy on APC pricing for 2026. The subsidy will offer:
| Authors | No ACM or SIG members | At least 1 ACM or SIG member |
|---|---|---|
| PACM Article | $350 | $250 |
| From a lower-middle-income country | $175 | $125 |
This represents a 65% discount off the regular APC list prices, funded directly by ACM. Authors are encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open during this transition period. This temporary subsidized pricing will apply to all publications that appear in 2026.
| Winter round 2026 | Summer round 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Submission due | ||
| Notifications to authors | ||
| Revisions due | ||
| Final decisions to authors | ||
| Camera-ready due |
Full papers are selected using a refereed process , meeting the ACM's highest requirements for rigorous review by the ISS Editorial Board, its associate editors, and peer experts. The review process takes place twice annually. Papers accepted in any round of submission will be published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmhci.
Accepted papers are invited to present at the ACM ISS 2026 conference in Turin, Italy, November 23 to 26, 2026. Presenting at the conference is strongly recommended but not required.
The conference retains its workshop, poster, and demo tracks, which will have their own publication outlet. The call for workshops, posters, and demos will be included in the second round.
Submissions will be done through http://new.precisionconference.com.
PACM HCI ISS will be returning submissions to the primary contact author with one of the following decisions, along with the reviews, after the first review cycle of this submission round:
By submitting your article to an ACM publication, you acknowledge that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies. Any alleged violations of policies will be formally investigated and may result in a full retraction of your paper, along with additional penalties in accordance with ACM Publications Policy.
Submissions must be anonymized. Primarily, this means that submissions must remove all author and institutional information from the title and header area of the submission. Author information should also be removed from submitted supplementary materials, in particular, videos. Submissions that do not do so may be rejected without review.
Furthermore, all references must remain intact. If you previously published a paper and your current submission builds on that work, the complete reference with the author's name must appear in the references. Authors must refer to their previous work in the third person (e.g., "We build on prior work by Smith et al. [X] but generalize their algorithm to new settings.") and avoid blank references (e.g., "12. REMOVED FOR REVIEWING"). Authors should also remove any information in the acknowledgements section that reveals authors or the institution (e.g., specific supporting grant information).
No minimum or maximum length is imposed on papers. Rather, reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length when making decisions about acceptance and revisions. Shorter, more focused papers will be reviewed with the expectation of a small, focused contribution. Papers whose length is incommensurate with their contribution will be rejected.
We recommend a page length in the new format of between 5-15 pages + any additional pages for references. Typical papers are under 8,500 words.
ACM authoring templates and detailed instructions on formatting can be found at https://dl.acm.org/journal/pacmhci/submission-templates.
Authors should submit manuscripts for review in a single column format, which is available for Word and LaTeX. Manuscripts should be converted to PDF before submission.
\documentclass[manuscript, review, anonymous]{acmart} to remove author information and add line numbers for the review process.Please use inclusive language throughout your papers. Some commonly-used charged terminology and alternative suggestions can be found at: https://www.acm.org/diversity-inclusion/words-matter. Please avoid using gendered language, ableist language, and racialized terminology.
You are asked to provide alt-text descriptions for all figures in your submission. Writing good descriptive text is important, so please look at http://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/describing-figures/ for guidance and examples.
After the submission deadline the final author list of the paper is established and adding or removing authors during the current submission round will not be possible. This is vital for maintaining the integrity of the peer review process and accurate author representation. If an author needs to be added or removed, the submission must be withdrawn and resubmitted in a future submission round. After acceptance of the paper, the author order can be adjusted during the publication-ready submission, but no authors can be added or removed. Author changes are only allowed between submission rounds for papers that received Major Revisions and are being resubmitted (e.g., a paper received Major Revisions in round 1 and they resubmit with an additional co-author in round 2)
Authors must disclose the use of text generated by large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, if the tool was used for purposes beyond minor copy-editing or refining the author's original text. Any LLM-generated text must be clearly marked. Authors should consult the ACM Policy on Authorship, ACM's FAQ on its policy, and the SIGCHI blog post for details on how to acknowledge LLM use and guidance on appropriate disclosure. Note: the LaTeX template hides the Acknowledgements section in review mode; please ensure that any required LLM disclosure is visible in your submitted version. Submissions flagged for potential undisclosed LLM use may be subject to desk rejection.
Manuscripts submitted for review that detail research with human subjects must adhere to the ethics review requirements of the authors' research environment. Given the variability in these requirements across different environments, authors must include a brief note for reviewers to provide this necessary context. Additionally, all authors should review the 2021 ACM Publications policy on research involving humans before submission.
Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID iD to complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has supported ORCID since its inception and is committed to collecting ORCID iDs from all published authors. ORCID improves author discoverability, ensures proper attribution, and supports community-wide efforts in name disambiguation.
Authors are encouraged to submit supplementary material when possible and when aligned with their methods. Authors are encouraged to submit links to preregistrations on the Open Science Framework (OSF) when appropriate for their work. Authors are also encouraged to use open access repositories and make their data and other material FAIR when appropriate for their work. Authors are encouraged to describe efforts to make their work more reproducible. Reviewers are encouraged to support evolving approaches to supporting open and transparent research practices. Supplementary material is not considered to be peer reviewed.
| Conference | |
|---|---|
| Nov. 23-26, 2026 | Main Conference |
| Submissions and Deadlines | |
|---|---|
| Papers submission due (winter round) | |
| Papers Notifications to authors (winter round) | |
| Papers Revisions due (winter round) | |
| Final papers decisions to authors (winter round) | |
| Papers submission due (summer round) | |
| Papers Notifications to authors (summer round) | |
| Papers Revisions due (summer round) | |
| Final papers decisions to authors (summer round) | |
| Papers camera-ready due | |