Workshops - Call For Participation

We solicit workshops related to all areas of visualization. They provide a forum for IEEE VIS for participants to advance cutting-edge research concerns, foster a community around emerging topics, engage experts in the field, disseminate work in progress, and promote new ideas. Workshops at IEEE VIS are free to attend by all registered attendees; “invitation only” workshops will not be approved.

Important Dates

Proposal Submission Friday, April 4, 2025
Notification Friday April 18, 2025
Final Submission of Summaries Thursday August 1, 2025

All deadlines are at 11:59pm (23:59) AoE Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

Note on symposia: This year, symposia and workshops will follow a common submission and competitive selection process. This decision stems from the fact that symposia held in previous years did not meet the criteria outlined by IEEE for qualifying as a Symposium (IEEE makes a distinction between symposia and workshops based on both size and publication policy. Symposia are expected to have at least 100 attendees, and are required to publish proceedings). As such, this CfP refers to all submissions as ‘workshops’. This decision may be revisited in subsequent years.

Workshops should accomplish one or more of the following:

emphasize emerging ideas, concepts, or technologies that are currently too nascent or too interdisciplinary to receive a welcome reception at the main conference;
propose (and execute on) approaches for active participation from attendees through interaction formats and modalities that diverge from what is available on the main tracks—i.e., going beyond papers, posters, and panels to include e.g., group discussions, brainstorming, prototyping, etc.
encourage and foster non-traditional submission types (e.g., demonstrations; artwork; pedagogical material; high quality, standalone talks; etc.)

Submission requirements

Workshop proposals should include:

a title,
a brief description of the workshop’s motivation and goals; for instance:
- how would the workshop help grow the VIS community’s intellectual horizons?
- what gaps do the organizers perceive in the main conference content/tracks that this workshop will help cover?
the planned activities including an outline schedule for the program
- where applicable, planned activities should include a description of how the workshop will facilitate active participation from attendees.
  *if the workshop program largely follows a paper presentation format, a brief justification for why this format is appropriate and why alternate formats would not be a good fit
if the workshop has been held previously, a brief evaluation of prior offerings. To allow the workshop chairs to select a diverse and dynamic range of workshops, this evaluation should include a robust rationale for why the workshop needs to be held again and, relatedly, what lessons have been learned from prior runs and how these lessons have been applied to the proposed program.
a brief definition of success for this workshop—that is, how might the organizers evaluate whether the workshop has made progress towards addressing the original goals and motivation. What data, that is meaningful for the workshop’s goals, might be collected to measure outcomes? Include an outline for a “backup policy” should success metrics such as number of submissions not be met (e.g., changing the event format, or voluntarily withdrawing the event before acceptance notification is sent. This should not require the organizers to submit emergency papers to their own event).
organizer details including contact information, backgrounds, related publications, and research interests.
a statement of the development of the list of contributors (e.g., paper authors, panelists, keynote speakers, etc.) including the number, and detailed selection procedures and timeline. Organizers should consider what steps they will take to encourage a diversity of contributors in their workshop (e.g., a balance of experience, background, gender, etc.) with the aim of making participation as inclusive as possible. We particularly encourage events that aim to attract and/or incorporate members from the practitioner community and research communities external to IEEE VIS.
whether the workshop will have archival content (papers, reports, artworks, etc.) and plan for publication (see the classes listed below),
a list of any special technology needed and in-person room configuration needs,
the number of poster slots requested, if the workshop intends to feature posters, and
the proposed dates for the call for participation, author notification, and camera-ready deadlines (author notification must be prior to the early registration deadline for IEEE VIS; for inclusion of materials on IEEE Xplore and/or the downloadable proceedings, the camera-ready deadline must be prior to August 19, 2025).

Because the number of workshop time slots is limited, half-day event proposals are strongly encouraged. However, well-justified full-day proposals will also be considered. Full-day proposals may optionally state what changes would be implemented to allow the schedule to fit within a half day.

The proposal should not exceed four pages. Please visit VGTC website for formatting details and submit via PCS.

Evaluation criteria

Workshops will be evaluated on multi-faceted criteria that include, the potential for impact to the researcher and practitioner community, interest and timeliness of the topic, the novelty of the program format, and the outcomes of prior workshops. We particularly encourage workshop submissions to experiment with different formats beyond traditional researcher-led paper and panel presentations, for example, to include practitioner presenters, dynamic forms of interactions among participants, and software demonstrations, among other possibilities.

A breakdown of these evaluative criteria is as follows:

Timeliness and Relevance

To what extent the topic tackles emergent areas of research that are pertinent to or aligned to IEEE VIS topics
The capacity to build research communities in understudied areas or for applications in underserved communities
the coherence of the proposed topic
the degree to which the topic would benefit from a workshop environment
the ability to attract people and make them excited about the workshop

Impact

the potential for inspiring people, being influential, and opening new lines of research
the ability to attract and/or incorporate members from the practitioner community and research communities external to IEEE VIS
if this workshop is a repeat submission, its previous success and justification for renewal.
workshops that have run for multiple years will face progressively higher degrees of scrutiny in determining a continued need for the workshop—proposals will be judged according to the success metrics defined in the proposal, and based on the self-evaluation organizers conduct of previous iterations

Format

the degree to which the workshop provides an more interactive environment for participants—all things being equal, preference will be given to workshops that emphasize participant interaction
the degree to which the workshop offers an innovative format (e.g., beyond paper presentations) as appropriate to the workshop’s goals
if this workshop has special needs, the feasibility of the proposed plan including financial, logistics, scheduling, and coordination impact.

The workshop chairs will balance the proposed topics and formats in order to support athe diversity of topics and dynamic sessions within IEEE VIS and complement the main program.

If accepted, workshops are required to prepare a short summary (50-100 words) for the workshop website and the web program.

Dissemination strategy

Workshops with alternative formats

Workshops featuring demonstrations or other forms of interactive participant feedback should coordinate with the workshop chairs if they wish to have archival content for their workshop.

Workshops with accepted papers

If papers or position papers are foreseen according to the planned workshop, the proposal should state explicitly whether and how the papers or position statements will be published. Accepted and archived VIS workshop papers can contribute to VIS full paper submissions in a future year. But, such submissions should not contain verbatim copies of previous content. Furthermore, any subsequent full paper submission to VIS must represent a novel scientific contribution of the content in a follow-up publication is fully allowed, also in the form of conference papers.

Some examples of common publication strategies are:

Regular publication (similar to small conferences):
- papers are available online at a central digital library with DOI (e.g., IEEE Xplore) or proceedings published in a different way
- papers are part of the downloadable proceedings
- papers are considered archival
Short position statements / work in progress notes (similar to posters):
- papers may or may not be available at a central digital library (with DOI); proceedings could also be published in a different way
- papers may be available on the workshop’s webpage
- papers may or may not be a part of the downloadable proceedings
- papers are not considered archival but could be cited
Semi-public notes:
- papers are not available at a central digital library
- papers may be available on the workshop’s webpage
- papers may or may not be a part of the downloadable proceedings
- papers are not considered archival but could be cited
Notes only for use at the workshop:
- papers are not available online at a central location
- papers are not a part of the downloadable proceedings
- papers are not considered archival and should not be cited

Attendance

At least one author for each paper must register and attend the conference in person or virtually. If you have exceptional circumstances and none of the authors can attend please contact the conference committee as soon as possible at info@ieeevis.org.

Workshop Support

The workshop organizers will receive the following support from the VIS conference:

one complimentary 1-day registration for an invited speaker,
room and AV support suitable for around 100 attendees,
food and beverages for attendees: coffee breaks throughout the day, Sunday evening opening reception, space in the poster display area, if requested (from limited pool set aside for standard workshops; available space depends on the specifics of the venue; early requests given priority over late requests),
PCS (Precision Conference Solutions) support for managing submissions and the review process,
inclusion of the workshop materials or proceedings in the downloadable conference proceedings for dissemination to attendees of the conference and/or in IEEE Xplore, if requested (materials must be provided by August 19, 2025),
IEEE Xplore Digital Library publication of the workshop proceedings, if requested (considered archival).

Please check the conference website for upcoming information concerning available funds for special purposes, such as supporting diversity. If the requirements of the workshop exceed this default support, the workshop organizers are expected to coordinate with the workshop chairs and possibly raise funds to support the workshop activities. Fundraising plans must be discussed with the workshop and supporters chairs prior to contacting any potential funder. For more information, see the guidelines for Financial and Coordination Policies for IEEE VIS.

Note that each workshop participant will need to register to attend the IEEE VIS conference.

Workshop Chairs

Arvind Satyanarayan, MIT CSAIL, USA
Anamaria Crisan, University of Waterloo, Canada
Ross Maciejewski, University of Arizona, USA
Michael E. Papka, University of Illinois Chicago / Argonne National Laboratory, USA
Petra Isenberg, Inria, Université Paris-Saclay, France