Supporting Reviewing Reviews: How HCI Authors Handle Peer Reviews of Manuscripts

Au Yeung, C., Stark, J., Li, J., Chevalier, F., Park, J., Kim, Y., and Tang, A. (2026). Supporting Reviewing Reviews: How HCI Authors Handle Peer Reviews of Manuscripts. In Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Human-Engaged Computing (ICHEC '25).

Abstract

Responding to peer reviews is a critical but under-supported stage of academic writing. Authors must interpret reviewer comments, infer underlying concerns, and coordinate revisions across teams. We report findings from interviews with 14 HCI authors that reveal how they engage in this interpretive and collaborative process. Authors distinguish between surface-level content and subtextual meaning in reviews, and often rely on intermediary documents to track issues, assign tasks, and develop response strategies. These documents support sensemaking, communication, and planning, but must be built manually. Our findings suggest that while interpretation of subtext remains a human judgment task, there are clear opportunities for interactive tools to support coordination, document linking, and traceability. We offer design implications for next-generation writing tools, including those powered by language models, that align with authors' workflows and preserve their interpretive agency.

Materials

URL (https://doi.org/10.1145/3786995.3786998)
DOI (https://doi.org/10.1145/3786995.3786998)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{auyeung2026reviewing,
  abstract = {Responding to peer reviews is a critical but under-supported stage of academic writing. Authors must interpret reviewer comments, infer underlying concerns, and coordinate revisions across teams. We report findings from interviews with 14 HCI authors that reveal how they engage in this interpretive and collaborative process. Authors distinguish between surface-level content and subtextual meaning in reviews, and often rely on intermediary documents to track issues, assign tasks, and develop response strategies. These documents support sensemaking, communication, and planning, but must be built manually. Our findings suggest that while interpretation of subtext remains a human judgment task, there are clear opportunities for interactive tools to support coordination, document linking, and traceability. We offer design implications for next-generation writing tools, including those powered by language models, that align with authors' workflows and preserve their interpretive agency.},
  type = {conference},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3786995.3786998},
  doi = {10.1145/3786995.3786998},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {Singapore},
  year = {2026},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Human-Engaged Computing (ICHEC '25)},
  title = {Supporting Reviewing Reviews: How HCI Authors Handle Peer Reviews of Manuscripts},
  author = {Au Yeung, Colin and Stark, Jessi and Li, Jiannan and Chevalier, Fanny and Park, Joonsuk and Kim, Young-Ho and Tang, Anthony},
}