HCI Production Process

The HCI production process starts with an accepted paper and finishes with the paper in print. There are several players in this process. The Author creates a final submission. The Editor does a final check of the paper. The Editor also decides which papers go into which issues of the journal. The Administrative Editor assembles all the elements of papers to be published in an issue and submits them to the publisher. The Production Editor, who works for the publisher, copyedits each paper, typesets it, and returns page proofs to the Author for proofreading.

NB: The Author should provide information where the Author can be contacted during the production process, in case further information is required. It is especially important to know where to send the page proofs. The Author should submit this contact information with the final submission.

Here is a step-by-step description of the process for a producing a paper ...

  1. Author: Formats the paper according to the guidelines for final submissions. Signs a Publication Agreement. Obtains permissions for use of any copyrighted materials in the paper (see guidelines). Submits all of these to
                            Patricia Sheehan
                        HCI Administrative Editor
                        Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
                        3333 Coyote Hill Road
                        Palo Alto, CA 94304
  2. Editor: Checks paper for conformance to HCI journal style. May ask Author to fix up some parts of the paper.
  3. Administrative Editor: Assembles all the necessary pieces needed for production -- author-contact information, hardcopy manuscript, electronic file on floppy, publication agreement, and permission letters. Prods Author for missing pieces. Sends everything to the publisher's Production Editor.
  4. Production Editor: Checks the submitted file and the hardcopy manuscript. Copyedits paper and typesets it (using an electronic page layout system). Write a set of Queries for the Author to complete a consistent, grammatical,  and correctly-formatted paper. Sends Page Proofs and Queries to Author.
  5. Author: Proofreads page proofs and marks corrections on the page proofs. Answers all Queries, adding requested information to the page proofs. Makes a copy of the marked-up page proofs as a backup. Within two days, sends page proofs to
                            Amy Munno, Production Editor
                        Human-Computer Interaction
                        Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
                        10 Industrial Avenue
                        Mahwah, NJ 07430
  6. Production Editor: Makes corrections to the publisher's typesetting file and sends it to the printer.