The IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (IEEE VAST 2016) is the leading international conference dedicated to advances in visual analytics. The scope of the conference, co-located at VIS with the annual IEEE Scientific Visualization Conference and the IEEE Information Visualization Conference, includes both fundamental research contributions within visual analytics as well as applications of visual analytics in science, engineering, medicine, health, media, business, social interaction, security and investigative analysis, and other disciplines. We invite you to participate in IEEE VAST 2016 by submitting your original research and application papers.

Following the successful two-track arrangement in the previous years, IEEE VAST 2016 will again feature an expanded set of accepted papers in two categories:

• TVCG Track

  Papers that exhibit the highest quality in terms of originality, rigor and significance will appear in a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG). This journal special issue will have the publication date of January 2017 and will be published online the first day of the conference (October 25, 2016); individual paper preprints will be available for online Early Access by September 1, 2016. The acceptance rate is anticipated to be similar to that of 2014 and 2015 (around 22%-25%) subject to the decisions resulting from the review process. After initial notification of review results, conditionally accepted papers (including supplemental material) will undergo a revision and review cycle in order to ensure that they are acceptable for publication and presentation in the journal. The paper and supplemental material will also be submitted to the IEEE Digital Library, subject to its standard terms and conditions

• Conference-only Track

  Innovative VAST submissions with a focus beyond the scope of the IEEE TVCG journal may be accepted as conference only papers. Those papers, which feature high quality new contributions, will be offered an opportunity to be presented as Conference Papers during IEEE VAST, and will be included on the IEEE VIS 2016 USB. After initial notification of review results, conditionally accepted papers (including supplemental material) will undergo a revision and approval cycle. The paper and supplemental material will be submitted to the IEEE Digital Library subject to its standard terms and conditions

Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by highly interactive visual interfaces. People use visual analytics tools and techniques in all aspects of science, engineering, business, and government to synthesize information into knowledge; derive insight from massive, dynamic, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments; and communicate assessments effectively for action. The issues stimulating this body of research provide a grand challenge in science: turning information overload into a significant opportunity. Visual analytics requires interdisciplinary science, going beyond traditional scientific and information visualization to include statistics, mathematics, knowledge representation, management and discovery technologies, cognitive and perceptual sciences, decision sciences, and more. Your submission should help develop and/or apply visual analytics, clearly showing an interdisciplinary approach.

From its outset, IEEE VAST has always given great emphasis to applications of visual analytics. While VAST 2016 seeks submissions in all areas of visual analytics, it particularly welcomes papers that make advances towards understanding or solving real world problems, or that impact a particular application in a significant way. A strong application paper, for which technique novelty is not essential, typically features one of the following qualities: namely high or broad impact, novel application, innovative technical adaptation or integration, or insightful experience or evaluation. For further discussion of application papers see the VAST paper types page.

All deadlines are at 5:00pm Pacific Time (PDT).

SUBMISSION

All three conferences at IEEE VIS 2016 (VAST, InfoVis and SciVis) use the Precision Conference System (PCS) to handle their submission and reviewing process. PCS is available at https://precisionconference.com/~vgtc/. When submitting your manuscript please make sure that you submit it to your intended conference by clicking the appropriate conference header in the conference system landing page. If you are unsure which venue you should submit to, you can use the call for papers on this website, as well as last year’s published proceedings, as a guideline.

DETAILED SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

When preparing your submission, please make sure that you carefully read and adhere to the paper submission guidelines.

TOPICS

Suggested topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

• Visual representations and interaction techniques including the principles for depicting information, new visual paradigms, statistical graphics, geospatial visualizations, the science of interaction, and approaches for generating visual analytic visualization and interactions.
• Data management and knowledge representation including scalable data representations for high volume and stream data, statistical and semantic signatures, and synthesis of information from diverse data sources.
• Mathematical foundations and algorithms for data transformations to allow interactive visual analysis.
• Analytical reasoning including the human analytic discourse, knowledge discovery methods, perception and cognition, and collaborative visual analytics
• Presentation, production, and dissemination methods including methods and tools for capturing the analytics process, methods for elicitation of stakeholder constraints, priorities & processes for incorporation in analysis, and storytelling for specific and varying audiences.
• Applications of visual analysis techniques, including but not limited to applications in science, engineering, humanities, business, public safety, commerce, and logistics as far as they contribute to visual analytics are of particular interest.
• Evaluation methods, visual ethical analysis such as privacy, security, & regulatory compliance, interoperability, and technology practice & experience.
• Discourse visualization and visual representations of the reasoning process.
• Algorithms and technologies which are fundamental for visual analytics, including user and device adaptivity, web interfaces and mobile or other novel devices.

CHAIRS

Gennady Andrienko, Fraunhofer IAIS & City University London
Shixia Liu, Tsinghua University
John Stasko, Georgia Institute of Technology

Email: vast_papers(at)ieeevis.org.