Top 10 ways to get your paper rejected at #CAGJournal

Computers & Graphics

University of Toronto April 30 2014

Top 10 ways to get your paper rejected

Joaquim JorgeEiC Computers and Graphics

Journal Head of Group

Visualization and Multimodal Interfaces@ INESC-ID Lisboa

http://web.ist.utl.pt/jorgej

Research Interests: Calligraphic Interaction, Multimodal Interfaces, Graphical Modeling

Writing is Important

GREAT ideas not enough

Need to Communicate them

What I know about good writing

What I know about bad writing

Author – papers rejected due to bad writing

Reviewer – many bad papers (1000+)

Editor – handled 1500+ as EiC

The Journal in 2013

Published since 1975

EiC since 2007

Experience to share

Lots of Submissions

698

Quick Decisions

5 Weeks

Reject Lots of Papers

82%

Scientists MUST Write

Great ideas are worthless

if nobody can understand them

Top 10 Ways to Get Your Paper Rejected

Make Editor’s life easier!

Desk Rejects make us look good

Less Reviewers invited

Shorter response time

Higher rejection rate

Happier reviewers

DO NOT READ THE INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

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Content

Pattern Recognition

Robotic Motion Controllers

Graph Theory

Algorithms for Neural Networks

Control Theory

Desk Reject

Ignore the style instructions

Author names (CAG is double-blind)

Old-style manuscripts

Reviewers in Graphics are picky

Check requirements

DO NOT CHECK FOR GRAMMAR OR SPELLING

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Sloppy!

Tehre is rseraceh taht sohws grammer or bad spllenig are not iapomrtnt

Tihs is bseauce the hamun mnid cmnepstoaes

Sloppy writing

why bother ?

Reviewers turned off

It is not their responsibility to get it right

PROVIDE NO MOTIVATION

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NO MOTIVATION

Present your results Out of the Blue Sky

Provide No Hints To

Origin of your ideas

Direction

Relevance

Practical Application

Why you are submitting

NO BACKGROUND

Remove

Acknowledgements / References

Or, IF You Must

“Submitted”

“In Preparation”

“Private Communication”

“Well known” results published in Aramaic

PROVIDE NO RESULTS

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NO RESULTS

If you provide no results it will be impossible to duplicate your work

Thus your assertions cannot be disproved

Ignore the state of the art

Do not compare your work to others’

Who cares if Obscurovich et al [uncit] did the same 2 years ago ?

Saves a LOT of work (NOT!)

Unsubstantiated Conclusions

Do not overreach

Do your data support your claims ?

Can you really claim your approach is free of limitations or shortcomings ?

Can you provide

Code ?

Examples ?

Video ?

Overstated Claims

Overselling a problem akin to lack of results

Will get your paper rejected

“Truth in advertising”

IGNORE THE READER

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Audience knows as much as you

You know your contribution

So they know

you don’t need to write it!

Audience knows as much as you

If you could do the research…

so should they (they’re experts, right?)

No need for details!

Write for yourself

Write a “descriptive paper”

We did this, we did that, and we did that

other thing

A dump of your lab book Will Do Fine

The 4 Don’ts

Don’t

discuss tradeoffs / alternatives

comment results

give insights

provide take-home messages

WASTE SPACE WITH IRRELEVANT DETAILS

5

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Small Details Are Important!

Spent 9 ½ weeks optimizing two lines of code?

The world needs to know about it!

Who cares about big ideas?

Real Authors ™ “If it was difficult to write…”

Why describe your work ?

Hamilton’s quaternions are only 170 years old

Nobody knows about them, right ?

Dedicate at least two pages to explain in detail

journal papers are the stuff of textbooks, right ?

OBFUSCATE YOUR WRITING

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Adopt a rambling style

Focus ? What focus ?

Provide at least 7 +- 2 ideas per page

Digress

Treat reviewers like mushrooms

OBFUSCATE

Use the Passive Voice. Always. LOTS of acronyms Change notations: χ(ξ) instead of f(x)

Preferably mid-paper

OBFUSCATE

No sentence smaller than a paragraph No paragraphs! Gender, Subject and Number should not

agree Use Footnotes

Recurse

RESUBMIT YOUR REJECTED PAPER WITH NO CHANGES

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Resubmit AS IS

Do NOT make any changes to the rejected version

Unlikely that the Associate Editor or

Reviewers will be the same…

If they were, they would be PO’D

Resubmit as IS

Personally OffendeD!

No kidding (I wish I could show)

The 3Rs

Reduce – get rejected in NO TIME (thanks!)

Reuse – receive the Same Reviews

Recycle – and Rejection Slip!

2PLAGIARIZE

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Need a previous work section?

Just copy somebody

else’s!

Or your own´s !

Reuse, Recycle,

Resubmit!

(see previous slide)

RRR

Those people are The Specialists,

Unlikely to check, read or review your paper….

Right ?

Plagiarize

Submit the same paper to different journals

and conferences

at the same time

CONTRIBUTION ?

1

Who needs a contribution ?

Make sure you write a boring paper

Do not bother to identify novelty

YAP (Yet Another Paper on…)

Do something similar to “X”

Suggestions (new problems!)

255th paper on Hidden Line Removal

2D Boolean polygon intersection

-1 equality test / point

Optimize ‘60s Bresenham’s DDA algorithm

-1 integer product

Quaternion-Free 3D Arbitrary Rotation

The Ten Commandments

10 Do Not read instructions

9 Do Not Proofread

8 Give no Motivation

7 Provide no Results

6 Ignore the Readers

5 Dwell on Unnecessary Details

4 Obfuscate Writing

3 Resubmit As Is

2 Plagiarize

1 Provide no Contribution

How to write a better paper

Begin with the end in mind

Write the paper before carrying out the research

Write desired research outcomes before carrying out the experiments / coding

Focus early on the contribution

Useful Pointers

How to have your abstract rejected by van Leunen & Lipton

www.sigsoft.org/conferences/vanLeunenLipton.htm

How to Get Your SIGGRAPH Paper Rejected by Jim Kajiya www.siggraph.org/publications/kajiya.pdf

How to Write a Paper by Ralph Martin

www.itn-insist.com/uploads/media/HowToWriteAPaper.pdf

How to Run a Paper Mill by John Woodwark

www.johnwoodwark.com/inge/docs/Pmill.pdf