In his "How to Run a Papermill" essay J. Woodwark stated: "In technical journals, [...] there is a special procedure in place by which your paper is vetted by the editor of the journal -- usually a cynical person -- who sends it out to a few cronies to demolish if they can. This is called refereeing, and the tougher it is (folklore has it) the better is the journal and the more -- not fewer -- submissions it receives."

The overall goal of this panel is to dispel certain myths associated with journal publications (such as moderate impact factors or unacceptably long timelines to publication), while starting a dialogue between the main visualization journal editorial boards and the visualization community at large. The panelists will present and discuss five major visualization journal venues available to researchers for disseminating their work. The goal is to inform the visualization audience of challenges from both sides and encourage a discussion for how to optimize the publication and editing process. Ultimately we hope to connect people and to promote interaction between them. To that end, this panel is one part of the larger, more ambitious Visweek Compass agenda.

Each panelist will have up to 10 minutes to present and quantitatively compare their journal with the others in terms of: mission, scope, impact factors, refereeing procedure, numbers of papers published, acceptance rates and publication timelines, in order to establish the context for the audience. The rest of the time will be open for questions. Questions may also be submitted in advance or during the panel electronically, through the VisWeek Compass wiki (http://vis.cs.pitt.edu/vis11/).