Type of Publication: Article in Collected Edition

How Visualization PhD Students Cope with Paper Rejections

Author(s):

Agarwal, Shivam; Latif, Shahid; Beck, Fabian

Title of Anthology:

IEEE Workshop Celebrating the Scientific Value of Failure (FailFest)

pages:

6-10

Publication Date:

2020

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

doi:10.1109/FailFest51498.2020.00006

Fulltext:

How Visualization PhD Students Cope with Paper Rejections (423 KB)

Talk associated with this publication:

IEEE VIS 2020 Workshop Celebrating the Scientific Value of Failure (FailFest @ VIS 2020)

Recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLQFBNQAEFI

Citation:

Download BibTeX

Abstract

We conducted a questionnaire study aimed towards PhD students in the field of visualization research to understand how they cope with paper rejections. We collected responses from 24 participants and performed a qualitative analysis of the data in relation to the provided support by collaborators, resubmission strategies, handling multiple rejects, and personal impression of the reviews. The results indicate that the PhD students in the visualization community generally cope well with the negative reviews and, with experience, learn how to act accordingly to improve and resubmit their work. Our results reveal the main coping strategies that can be applied for constructively handling rejected visualization papers. The most prominent strategies include: discussing reviews with collaborators and making a resubmission plan, doing a major revision to improve the work, shortening the work, and seeing rejection as a positive learning experience.