Paper Submission Guidelines

IEEE Vis follows the 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 paper deadline – submission information (title, abstract, authors) are due on March 21, and full papers with supplemental material are due on March 31.
  • Author information fixed after the abstract deadline – the author list for a submission MUST be complete by the abstract submission deadline, March 21 (and cannot be changed thereafter).
  • 9+2 pages restriction – VIS papers are strictly limited to 9 pages of content plus additional 2 pages of references. The final two pages can also include the Supplemental Material, Figure Credits, and Acknowledgements sections, in addition to references. Papers may be shorter than this limit but must make a significant contribution (compared to the separate Short Papers program). See below for more details.
  • Resubmissions are encouraged – authors are encouraged to include reviews and responses for previously rejected papers in their submission to IEEE VIS.
  • Single-blind or double-blind submissions – the reviewers’ identities are not revealed. Authors may choose to anonymize their submission, but this is not required. However, for many types of papers double-blind submission is good scientific practice and strongly recommended (see below for details).

Submission System

IEEE VIS uses the Precision Conference System (PCS) to handle the submission and reviewing process. When submitting your manuscript, at the top of the PCS Submissions tab you should select ‘VGTC’ for the society, ‘VIS 2024’ for the conference/journal, and ‘VIS 2024 Full Papers’ for the track. Then, 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 information guiding you to choose an appropriate area along with example papers for each area.

Formatting and Language Guidelines

Papers must follow the formatting guidelines for IEEE VIS TVCG Journal submissions. Note that the template has changed since 2024 (latest update Feb 9, 2024), see below for updates on page length. Both authors and reviewers should also note that the previous paper types specified in the template are no longer in effect for VIS although they are used by other conferences, so please ignore the vgtcpapertype field in the template. 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: non-native English speakers may wish to enlist an English language editing service.

Anonymization

IEEE VIS allows both double-blind (anonymized) and single-blind (not 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 identity-revealing information (or formulations) in the text.

Double-blind submissions are recommended whenever possible. However, if it is not possible to anonymize without compromising scientific clarity, authors are free to reveal their identities upon submission. For some types of submissions, for example, the specific place of performance, user audience, geographical location, problem domain, partner company, etc, are critical to the contribution itself; in other cases, anonymization would be extremely difficult, as with software that has been publicly released which has a user community. For situations such as these, it may make sense to submit a paper as single-blind.

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 considered. Furthermore, submission information—including title, abstract, and author(s)—MUST be entered by the abstract deadline on March 21. Adding authors after the abstract deadline is not allowed. The author information is used to detect conflicts of interest when assigning papers to program committee members and reviewers, so it must be complete by the time abstracts are submitted. However, minor edits to title and abstract are allowed throughout the reviewing process, especially when requested by the reviewers.

Originality & Reuse of Text

All submissions must be novel contributions by the authors. This means that they must be original work by the authors that has not been published previously in or submitted concurrently to any conference proceeding, magazine or journal, or the like, in any language, in any form, in whole or in part, by any combination of authors.

A paper is considered published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed and archived journal, in conference proceedings, or the like, making it available to non-attendees in the form of archives (including digital).

Concurrent submissions (i.e., having the same or a similar paper concurrently under review at another conference or journal/magazine) 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. Further consequences are possible, as well.

Previously published text may not be reused verbatim in a VIS paper submission. Although similarities may be inevitable in discussing background or previous work, the reuse of text can infringe copyright, and is therefore prohibited. Images from published work may only be reused if they are properly cited and the authors have obtained the rights to re-publish the images.

All related previous work by the authors must be cited and the differences from past work must be clearly explained. These citations may be cited anonymously where appropriate, for example by redacting details of the reference or by writing the citation in the third person.

The sole exception to these prohibitions is that preliminary work described in posters, contest entries, or workshops from previous VIS conferences, if not properly published, may be resubmitted provided the submission includes substantial additional new material, the previous work is cited, and the provisions of the VIS Workshop Publication Strategy are met.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism of the work of others is at all times unacceptable and will lead to the submission being removed from the review process. For more information, please see the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

All authors will therefore be required to certify on the submission form that the submitted work is the authors’ own work. All submissions are checked for plagiarism using IEEE iThenticate and potential cases inspected in detail by the APCs and OPCs.

Self-plagiarism, which is verbatim copying of text from the authors’ own prior work, is disallowed in many cases but legitimate in others.

  • Preprint: If the previous paper is a non-published preprint (for example on public repositories such as arXiv or OSF or an institutional repository such as HAL) or technical report (hosted by a specific university or organization) that does not appear in any publisher’s digital library, and the authors are identical or mostly overlapping, no citation is necessary and copying of text is allowed.
  • Thesis: If the previous paper was a thesis or dissertation, and the student is an author/co-author of the work, the work should be cited and copying of text is allowed.
  • Nonarchival: If the previous paper appears at a non-archival and lightly-reviewed or non-reviewed venue such as posters, alt.chi/alt.vis, or other non-archived workshops, and the author list is identical or mostly overlapping, the work should be cited and copying of text is allowed.
  • Published: If the previous paper has gone through peer review by an established publisher and is archived in the publisher’s digital library, copying of text is not allowed.
  • Extended: If the previous paper is an extended paper from previous archivally published submission (eg short paper from VIS or EuroVis), with identical or mostly overlapping author list, the work should be cited. Copying of text is not allowed. See Short Papers CFP guidance for more details.

Review Process

IEEE VIS papers undergo a rigorous review process involving at least three reviewers over multiple rounds of reviewing. Some papers may be desk rejected — rejected before they enter this detailed peer reviewing — by the OPCs/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.

Decisions after the first round of reviews are usually 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. Authors can make use of more than two pages for references if the total is still within the 11 (9+2) page limit. Please ensure that your submission contains no content except references on the (optional) 10th and 11th pages. The final two pages can also include links to the Supplemental Material, Figure Credits, and Acknowledgements sections, in addition to references. Note that the Supplemental Material section in the paper should only include pointers to the material and explanation of what is included in that material, not the material itself; similarly, Figure Credits should only include credits, not actual figure material (images or captions). Manuscripts that are submitted with non-reference content such as other text, figures, or tables beyond 9 pages may be desk rejected. If authors would like to make use of more than two pages for references (in addition to at most 9 pages of content), resulting in more than 11 pages in total, special justifications must be provided with the submission and an approval is needed by TVCG (to be acquired by the program committee) that is not guaranteed up-front.

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.

The size limit for the PDF paper is 300 MB.

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 to increase the scrutiny 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. Authors should not alter any supplemental materials, even externally linked supplemental material, after the submission deadline.

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. We emphasize that it is not acceptable to submit a previously rejected paper without addressing the previous review comments. It is also beneficial if the track record of previous reviewing is provided.

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.
  • Previous reviews - complete reviews from the last submission.
  • Cover letter - responses to past reviews (often as summary plus details).

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 VIS, IEEE VAST, IEEE InfoVis, IEEE SciVis, ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM CHI, ACM UIST, EuroVis, Eurographics, 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 is NOT permitted.

Submissions will be treated as confidential communications during the review process, and thus submissions do 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.

Each full paper accepted at IEEE VIS 2024 will be required to be presented by one of the authors, either in-person or virtually. All presenters are required to register as a speaker, irrespective of their mode of presentation. Additionally, diversity and inclusivity scholarships will be available to support the participation of speakers with financial needs.

Use of Generative AI in Paper Writing

The use of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in an article (including but not limited to text, figures, images, and code) shall be disclosed in the acknowledgments section of any article submitted to an IEEE publication. The AI system used shall be identified, and specific sections of the article that use AI-generated content shall be identified and accompanied by a brief explanation regarding the level at which the AI system was used to generate the content. The use of AI systems for editing and grammar enhancement is common practice and, as such, is generally outside the intent of the above policy. In this case, disclosure as noted above is optional.

Expectations for References

For the list of references at the end of the document, we expect from authors that they check each bibliographic entry for correctness (e.g., author names including special characters, publication years, publication type, page numbers vs. article numbers, etc.), completeness (all needed information for the respective entry type), and general consistency of reporting. Note that authors cannot trust any web service (Google Scholar, Zotero, Mendeley, …) or digital libraries (even IEEE Xplore or ACM DL) for correct entries, cross-check every paper. In particular, ensure that all needed data is present. For conference papers (InProceedings): authors, title, proceedings name, publisher (short: e.g., “ACM” is fine) with town (short: e.g., no need for “New York, NY, USA”; “New York” is fine), page numbers or article number, DOI. For journal papers (Article): authors, title, journal name, volume, number (if exists), page numbers or article number, DOI. Please note, in particular, that VIS papers that appear in TVCG are frequently cited incorrectly: the year to be mentioned for these papers is not the year of presentation, but the year of publication of the respective special issue in TVCG (quick check: volume and year should either both be even or both be odd; if that’s not the case the citation is wrong).

In addition, we expect that authors provide a hyperlinked DOI for each entry for which it exists to make it easy for reviewers to access the respective literature. DOIs exist for virtually all published papers, and arXiv preprints, and also some books. To do so in LaTeX, just use the DOI field in your BibTex (.bib) file and then use one of the BibTeX styles from the template that have “hyperref” in the name (abbrv-doi-hyperref.bst or the abbrv-doi-hyperref-narrow.bst).

Please also check for consistency: title capitalization (watch out for proper names and acronyms), proceedings names (short form like “Proc. CONF” (e.g. “Proc. PacificVis” or “Proc. CHI”) for brevity is ok and avoids mentioning the year multiple times in the entry) and journal names (you can use ISO4 abbreviations, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4 and https://journal-abbreviations.library.ubc.ca/), either never or always use months for articles (if you want to use months, use BibTeX variables like jan, not {01}, {jan}, {Jan}, or other), etc. Check for correct spelling of all author names in both the bibliography and also in your main document.

Note that recently several journals and publishers have started to use article numbers instead of page numbers, do not cite them as a single page but (consistently) either as “article no. 117, 12 pages” (like ACM does) or as “117:1–117:12” for the pages. Please also note that for those papers which have not yet fully appeared please do not give any page numbers (e.g., “1–12”) that some digital library may give you, but cite them without page numbers and with the current year (2024 right now) and with a note “In press” or “To appear” (and give the DOI if it exists already).

Ethics Guidelines

IEEE VIS adheres to the VGTC ethics guidelines for reviewers and has established a Code of Conduct. In all aspects of the paper handling process, any possible violation of these guidelines is taken seriously and may be reported to the APCs/OPCs for further handling within the VIS organization. Special attention is paid to the identification and reporting of plagiarism and possibly unethical paper content is monitored carefully in the reviewing process, also. We assume a zero tolerance policy regarding harassment situations as outlined in the Code of Conduct, should any such situation occur in the paper handling process. Investigation and processing of reported cases may lead to an escalation to the IEEE level.

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.