How Visualization PhD Students Cope with Paper Rejections

TL;DR

This study explores how visualization PhD students cope with paper rejections, highlighting effective strategies like collaboration, revision, and viewing rejection as a learning opportunity.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights into coping mechanisms and strategies used by visualization PhD students to handle paper rejections effectively.

Findings

Students generally cope well with rejections.

Main strategies include discussing reviews and planning resubmission.

Rejection viewed as a positive learning experience.

Abstract

We conducted a questionnaire study aimed towards PhD students in the field of visualization research to understand how they cope with paper rejections. We collected responses from 24 participants and performed a qualitative analysis of the data in relation to the provided support by collaborators, resubmission strategies, handling multiple rejects, and personal impression of the reviews. The results indicate that the PhD students in the visualization community generally cope well with the negative reviews and, with experience, learn how to act accordingly to improve and resubmit their work. Our results reveal the main coping strategies that can be applied for constructively handling rejected visualization papers. The most prominent strategies include: discussing reviews with collaborators and making a resubmission plan, doing a major revision to improve the work, shortening the work, and seeing rejection as a positive learning experience.