About Computer-Human Interaction and Intelligence

Computer-Human Interaction and Intelligence

Computer-Human Interaction and Intelligence is an English-language, open-access journal published by KeAi Communications in Beijing, with publishing services provided by Elsevier, and owned by the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It publishes research on the design, understanding and evaluation of interactive computing systems in the age of artificial intelligence, providing an interdisciplinary venue for work that advances the theory, methods, technologies and applications of computer–human interaction, with particular emphasis on the new forms of interaction enabled by AI, intelligent agents, robotics and emerging computing paradigms.

The journal's defining concern is the human element. It emphasises people within interactive intelligent systems, and the broader technological and social contexts in which they communicate, collaborate, learn, make decisions and act with computational systems. It is especially concerned with how intelligent technologies can be designed, deployed and studied in ways that are human-centred, effective, trustworthy, inclusive and socially beneficial. It is published quarterly, from an editorial office at the Institute of Software, No. 4 Zhongguancun South Fourth Street, Haidian District, Beijing.

The owner and the publisher

The Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, owns the journal and retains copyright of the overall compiled journal and the compiled issues; the editorial contact is at the institute, at chii@iscas.ac.cn. Peer review is conducted under the responsibility of the journal's editorial board, and the journal has established the position of Executive Editor, who assists the editor-in-chief during the peer-review process and to whom the editor-in-chief may delegate specific review tasks, receiving constructive feedback in return. Submissions from the Executive Editor, and from authors who have a conflict of interest with them, are handled confidentially by a different team member.

Publishing services come from KeAi Communications Co., Ltd., a Beijing-based joint venture co-founded by China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. (CSPM) and Elsevier. Repurposed in 2013 as an open-access journal publishing service provider, KeAi has developed a portfolio of more than 280 scholarly journals across all scientific disciplines, leveraging the technology and production capabilities of its parent companies, including ScienceDirect, Editorial Manager, data analytics and production. Submissions to KeAi journals are screened automatically using iThenticate's CrossCheck to detect overlapping and similar text, with high-similarity papers desk-rejected, and authors are encouraged to provide an ORCID iD with their submission.

Interaction in the age of artificial intelligence

Human–computer interaction is a mature field, but the journal's premise is that artificial intelligence has changed what is being interacted with. Earlier interfaces executed commands; intelligent systems now generate content, make recommendations, initiate actions and adapt to their users, which raises new questions about understanding, control, trust and responsibility. By naming intelligence alongside interaction in its title, the journal claims that territory explicitly: it is a venue for research on interactive systems whose behaviour is partly learned, probabilistic or autonomous, and for the human-centred methods needed to design and evaluate such systems.

The journal welcomes theoretical, empirical, methodological and system-oriented contributions. That range matters in HCI, where a contribution may be a new interaction technique, a controlled study of how people use a system, a design method, a theoretical account of interaction, or a working system whose design embodies a research claim. The journal states that it publishes work advancing both foundational understanding and practical innovation, so basic research on how people perceive and act with intelligent systems and applied work on real interfaces are both in scope.

Scope I: human–AI and human–robot interaction

Human–AI interaction heads the topic list: how people communicate with, direct, supervise, correct and collaborate with AI systems, and how those systems should explain themselves and signal uncertainty. Human–robot interaction follows, covering physical and social robots, where interaction is embodied and takes place in shared space, with consequences for safety, social interpretation and trust that screen-based interfaces do not raise. Intelligent user interfaces covers interfaces that use AI techniques to adapt, personalise or assist, while interactive hardware covers the physical devices — sensors, wearables, tangible objects and novel input and output devices — through which interaction happens.

Computational interaction and interaction techniques and modalities complete the technical core of the scope. Computational interaction denotes the use of computational methods, including optimisation and machine learning, to model and design interaction itself; techniques and modalities cover the concrete ways people give input and receive output, from touch, gesture, speech and gaze to multimodal combinations. Taken together, these topics give the journal coverage from the algorithm that decides how an interface behaves to the hand, voice or eye movement with which a person uses it.

Scope II: spatial computing, accessibility, evaluation and social computing

Spatial computing and XR — extended reality, encompassing virtual, augmented and mixed reality — covers interaction in three-dimensional, immersive and spatially registered environments, where questions of presence, motion, perception and physical comfort become part of interface design. Accessibility, aging, health and inclusive interaction covers the design of systems that can be used by people with disabilities, by older adults, and in health contexts, and more broadly the design of interaction that does not exclude. That strand connects directly to the journal's stated aim that intelligent technologies be inclusive and socially beneficial, rather than merely powerful.

User-centred evaluation covers the methods by which interactive systems are tested with people and judged — usability studies, field studies, experiments and other empirical assessments of whether a system works for its intended users. Visualisation and visual interaction covers how data and information are represented so that people can explore and understand them interactively. Social computing, CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work) and collaboration covers systems that mediate communication and joint work between people, from shared workspaces to online communities. These three topics supply the journal's methodological and social breadth: how interaction is evaluated, how information is made legible, and how technology shapes collective activity.

Article types

The journal publishes research articles, described as complete reports on original research, and review articles providing in-depth and up-to-date critical reviews of a related topic, together with other scholarly contributions that advance foundational understanding and practical innovation in computer–human interaction and intelligence.

Peer review

It follows a single anonymized review process. A submission is first assessed by the editors to determine suitability for publication; if suitable, it is typically sent to a minimum of two reviewers for an independent expert assessment of its scientific quality, and the decision on acceptance or rejection is taken by the editors and is final. The editorial office initially reviews all manuscripts and may desk-reject those that are out of scope, raise ethical conflicts, show high similarity to existing work, lack originality, or contain flaws in research design or methods, before passing selected papers to the editor-in-chief, who invites reviewers directly or assigns an editorial board member to do so. After at least two reviewers report, the editor-in-chief or assigned editor feeds back to the authors, and on resubmission the assigned editor and editor-in-chief collaborate on the final decision. Editors are not involved in decisions on their own papers, on papers by family members or colleagues, or on papers relating to products or services in which they have an interest, and such papers are handled independently; the same confidential handling applies to submissions from board members and from authors with conflicts of interest with them, and to special-issue submissions where a guest editor is conflicted. Authors must follow Elsevier's publishing ethics policies, appoint a single corresponding author to manage communication with the journal, and disclose funding sources and competing interests.

Open access, licensing and charges

Computer-Human Interaction and Intelligence is fully open access: articles are universally and freely accessible via the internet in perpetuity, in an easily readable format, immediately after publication, and can be read, downloaded, copied and distributed by anyone. The open-access publication fee is USD 1,200 plus taxes, payable by authors or on their behalf by their institution or funders, but all charges for articles submitted before 31 December 2027 are fully waived, giving the journal a defined free-to-publish launch window.

Articles are published under a Creative Commons licence according to the author's choice. CC BY allows users to copy an article, create extracts, abstracts and new works from it, alter and revise it and make commercial use of it, provided they give appropriate credit with a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI, provide a link to the licence, indicate if changes were made, and do not represent the licensor as endorsing the use. CC BY-NC-ND allows copying and distribution only for non-commercial purposes and does not permit distribution of a changed or edited version, again with appropriate credit and a link to the licence. For individual articles, authors retain copyright alongside scholarly usage rights, and KeAi Communications is granted non-exclusive publishing and distribution rights. The journal is published quarterly.

Who the journal is for

The intended community is the interdisciplinary HCI community as it now exists: interaction designers and computer scientists building intelligent interfaces, researchers in human–AI and human–robot interaction, specialists in accessibility and inclusive design, visualisation researchers, CSCW and social computing researchers, and evaluators and methodologists who study how people actually use interactive systems. Its ownership by a Chinese Academy of Sciences software institute and its place in the KeAi portfolio also make it a natural home for the large Chinese HCI research community to publish in English for an international audience.

Because the journal is new, early authors benefit from the APC waiver running to the end of 2027 and from a scope wide enough to accommodate technique, system, study and theory papers. Prospective contributors should consult the journal's KeAi pages for its current editorial board and full guide for authors, and should make the human element of their work explicit: the journal's stated test is not whether a system is intelligent, but whether the research advances how people and intelligent systems interact in ways that are human-centred, effective, trustworthy, inclusive and socially beneficial.