Peer review is one of the critical components of academic research communities: it plays a crucial role in achieving high quality research publications and has a huge influence on the research community’s culture. For academic conferences like IEEE VIS, the program committee (PC) is a backbone of the peer review process. How the PC members work and coordinate throughout the review process affects the quality of the paper program and the experiences of multiple groups of people involved in the review process, including authors, reviewers, and paper chairs. The main goal of this tutorial is to offer insight into the tasks and expectations for PC members for the IEEE VIS full papers program. We want this tutorial to serve as a resource for future PC members (as well as novice PC members) and help them successfully serve in this important role.

Topics

This tutorial will cover the key aspects of the VIS paper review process, including the new area model and keyword use, as well as how to bid, to find & assign external reviewers, to write reviews, and to lead discussions and write meta-reviews.

There will be hands-on exercises using the test conference paper submission system: PCS. *** If you want to participate fill out the form below. ***

Audience

The primary audience for this tutorial are:

• senior-level PhD students and junior-level visualization researchers who want to serve as a program committee (PC) member in the future;

• visualization researchers with past PC experiences who want to learn about recent changes with the new area model.

How to Participate

During the tutorial we will go through the paper submission system and show you from the papers chairs and program committee view what you are expected to do. You can participate in a sample bidding process and will be assigned some sample papers to handle and find reviewers for. To participate in this tutorial, please do the following:

• if you do not already have one, Go to https://new.precisionconference.com (PCS) and create an account.

• Log in to your PCS account and submit a sample paper - any existing paper pdf is ok and you can make up submission data. To do so:

  • Click "Submissions" tab on the top

  • Select "VGTC" for Society, "VIS 2021" for Conference/Journal, and "VIS 2021 Test" for Track, as shown below

• Click the "GO" button and make a COMPLETE submission to the track.

• Next fill out the participation form below so that we can add you as a PC member in the submission system.