Paper Submission Guidelines

From 2021, IEEE Vis follows the new area model, and thus a paper for IEEE VIS should be submitted to one of six areas. Make sure that you carefully read both the descriptions for each of the six areas (see also the Area Model FAQs) and the guidelines below before submitting your paper.

Contents

Important Submission Requirements

  • Abstract vs. full deadline - submission information (title, abstract, authors) are due on March 21, and full papers with supplemental material are due on March 31.
  • 9+2 page restriction - VIS papers are strictly limited to 9 pages of content plus an additional 2 pages of references. Papers may be shorter than this limit but must make a similar contribution to a longer paper.
  • Resubmissions encouraged - authors are encouraged to include reviews and responses for previously rejected papers in their submission to IEEE VIS.
  • Optional single-blind or double-blind submissions - reviewers’ identities are never revealed. Authors may choose whether to anonymize their submission or not.
  • Author information frozen after the abstract deadline - the author list for a submission MUST be complete by the abstract submission deadline on March 21.

Submission System

IEEE VIS uses the Precision Conference System (PCS) to handle the submission and reviewing process. When submitting your manuscript, please make sure that you submit it to your intended area by choosing the appropriate area from the list of six areas. In the area description page, you can find the information guiding you to choose an appropriate area along with example papers for each of the areas.

Formatting and Language Guidelines

Papers must follow the formatting guidelines for IEEE VIS TVCG Journal submissions. Papers should include full-color figures throughout and we encourage authors to showcase their work with annotated, well described, large, and detailed graphics. We also encourage the placement of a teaser image at the top of the very first page to showcase your work visually. IEEE VIS reviewers appreciate high-quality submissions with correct English spelling and grammar, so non-native English speakers may wish to enlist an English language editing service.

Anonymization

IEEE VIS allows both single-blind (not anonymized) and double-blind (anonymized) submissions. Double-blind submissions are intended for those authors who want to submit their work anonymously. Double-blind submissions should NOT include author names or institutions on the cover page of the initial submission, and authors should make an effort to ensure that there is no revealing information in the text, such as obvious citations to authors’ previous work, or making acknowledgments to colleagues of long standing. Authors are free to reveal their names and affiliations upon submission if they choose not to anonymize their work.

Abstract submission

Note that submission of an abstract for each paper is mandatory by March 21, and full papers with all supplemental material are due on March 31. Late submissions, or submissions without a previously submitted abstract, will not be allowed. Furthermore, submission information—including title, abstract, and author(s)—MUST be complete by the abstract deadline on March 21. In particular, adding authors or changing title and abstract after the abstract deadline is not allowed. The author information is used for detecting conflicts of interest when assigning papers to program committee members and reviewers, so it must be complete by the time abstracts are submitted.

Plagiarism

All submissions must be original work that has not been published previously in any archived conference proceeding, magazine, or journal. Specifically, although VIS papers are published as a special issue of the TVCG journal, submissions must be new work and not extended versions of previous conference publications. Related previous work by the authors must be cited (anonymously if desired and appropriate, i.e., either by redacting details for the citation or rewriting it in third person), and the differences to past work described in the submitted manuscript must be clearly explained. The re-use of images from published work is allowed if properly cited and the authors have obtained the rights to re-publish the images.

Concurrent submissions (i.e., having the same paper under review at more than one conference or journal/magazine at the same time) are strictly forbidden. If it is determined that an identical or substantially similar manuscript is simultaneously under consideration at another publication venue or forum (e.g., conference, journal, edited book), the manuscript will be rejected at an early stage in the review process.

A paper is considered published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed archived journal or in published meeting proceedings that are commercially available afterward to non-attendees in the form of archives (including digital). However, preliminary work described in posters, contest entries, or workshops from previous VIS conferences is generally not considered formally published, and may be resubmitted provided it includes substantial additional new material and the previous work is cited. See the VIS Workshop Publication Strategy section for rules governing what material from previous VIS workshops is eligible for submission to the VIS conference.

At the time of submission, the authors must certify on the submission form that the submitted work is the authors’ own work. All submissions are routinely checked for plagiarism using IEEE Crosscheck and potential cases inspected in detail by the APCs. Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and will lead to a removal of the submission from the review process. For more information, please see the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

Review Process

All IEEE VIS papers undergo a rigorous review process involving at least four reviewers over several rounds of reviewing. Some papers may be desk rejected — rejected outright before they enter peer review — by the APCs if they determine that the submission is clearly out of scope for the VIS conferences, is written using poor language that precludes effective communication, does not follow the formatting guidelines, or is otherwise not appropriate.

All decisions after the first round of reviews are either conditional acceptances or rejections. All conditionally accepted papers come with written requirements for final acceptance. Effectively addressing these requirements in a second round version of the paper is essential and the responsibility of the authors. Reviewers may sometimes communicate directly with authors to address minor points in the revised paper, effectively allowing for additional reviewing rounds. However, such additional communication is at the discretion of reviewers and not a requirement. If the revised version of a paper fails to address feedback to the satisfaction of the reviewers, the paper will ultimately be rejected after the second reviewing round.

Page Length Restrictions

Paper length may be up to a maximum of nine (9) pages with additional two (2) pages allowed only for references. Please ensure that your submission contains no content beyond references on the (optional) 10th and 11th pages (including figures, tables, or acknowledgments). Manuscripts that are submitted with non-reference content beyond 9 pages may be required to be shortened by the authors on very short notice (within 24 hours), or even desk rejected (for egregious violations). Papers may be shorter than 9 pages but still present a significant contribution. Using effective and informative graphics can be a good use of the available space. A paper does not have to include two full pages of references, but the generous allocation of these pages is meant to signify the importance that IEEE VIS attaches to authors fully anchoring their work in both its full academic context and the state of the art.

Supplemental Material

We encourage the use of digital video to enhance a submission, particularly if part or all of the work addresses interactive techniques. Submission of code, data, evaluation protocols or other supplemental material in order to increase the scrutinizability of the work is encouraged. Authors are urged to make available salient parameter settings of pertinent algorithms and ideally obtain results using open source data. If specific datasets are employed, we ask that a version of these be made available where possible. Information or pointers to information that can be changed after the submission deadline should not be used as supplemental material.

Supplemental material may also include optional cover letters. Cover letters are primarily used for communicating special circumstances about a paper or information about resubmissions of previously rejected papers (below). Most submissions will not include a cover letter. While most reviewers will take supplemental material into account when conducting their reviews, the authors should ensure that their submission will stand on its own even without this extra material.

Resubmitting Rejected Papers

Excellent work sometimes requires addressing issues that preclude acceptance within the scope of a single review cycle – IEEE VIS welcomes revised, resubmitted papers. For this reason, authors are encouraged (but not required) to include past reviews and a response letter as supplemental material when they resubmit a previously rejected paper to IEEE VIS. The purpose of this mechanism is to add continuity and memory to the process so that authors can demonstrate improvement over time, even if reviewers change from cycle to cycle.

Note that submitting past reviews and a response letter is optional and at the discretion of the authors. Furthermore, past reviews are not restricted to IEEE VIS, but may include other venues where a paper has been rejected. Reviewers are instructed to not penalize resubmitted papers for past rejections, but instead view the trajectory of a resubmission based on past reviews and author response. However, as with supplemental material, reviewers are not required to take past reviews and response letters into account when conducting their review. Resubmissions should be submitted with information pertaining to the original submission as supplemental material (PDF format):

  • Past submission - previous version of the paper (optional).
  • Previous reviews - complete reviews from the last submission.
  • Cover letter - responses to past reviews.

Authors are responsible for the content of the response letter, but effective letters tend to summarize the main points of criticism in the past reviews and explain how the new version of the paper addresses these points.

General Expectations

We expect that submissions will clearly discuss novel and significant contributions and place them in the context of prior art in the field. This involves highlighting how the current contributions differ from and advance the state-of-the-art in visualization, especially, but not limited to previous work published in the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) and other leading journals and conferences including IEEE VAST, IEEE InfoVis, IEEE SciVis, ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM CHI, ACM UIST, EuroVis, and IEEE PacificVis.

When submitting your abstract (for the March 21 deadline) you will be asked to provide a complete list of authors even when submitting an anonymized version of the manuscript. This is required to avoid potential conflicts of interest when assigning reviewers. Adding additional authors after the abstract deadline or the final acceptance of a paper will not be permitted.

Submissions will be treated as confidential communications during the review process, thus submission does not constitute public disclosure of any ideas therein. Submissions should contain no information or materials that will be proprietary or confidential at the time of publication (at the conference), and should cite no publications that are proprietary or confidential at the time of publication.

At least one author of an accepted paper must attend the conference to present the work, and authors will also be required to present a very brief summary of their talk at a fast forward session. The latter may change when the format (e.g., physical, virtual, hybrid) of the conference is finalized.

Ethics Guidelines

IEEE VIS adheres to the VGTC ethics guidelines for reviewers. Please contact the APCs for the relevant area if you suspect that a reviewer has violated these guidelines.

Paper Submission Keywords

Authors are expected to select appropriate keywords for submitted papers. These keywords are specified when submitting via PCS. Please see the VIS Paper Submission Keywords for descriptions of the keywords, sample papers, and history of how the keywords are selected.