How we Guide, Write, and Cite at CHI

Henning Pohl, Aske Mottelson

Abstract: There are many opinions on how to write an influential CHI paper, ranging from writing in an active voice to including colons in the title. However, little is known about how we actually write, and how writing influences impact. We conducted quantitative analyses of the full text of all 6578 CHI papers published since 1982 to investigate. We looked at readability, titles, novelty, and name-dropping and related these measures to the papers' citation count; overall and for different subcommittees. We found that CHI papers are more readable than papers from other fields. Furthermore, readability, title length, and novelty markers all influence citation counts.