Post by Frank Elavsky

While at VIS, I received 2 rejections from CHI. Sad! But in good news: I received 2 more special recognitions for my reviews! 🎉 I now have 9 total reviews (out of 32 during my PhD) that have either received a "Special Recognition for Outstanding Review" (7) or recognized as "Highly Useful" (2) across CHI (4 separate years), UIST, and VIS. I look back on all the reviews that did well, and what do they have in common? I am extensively supportive of the work and offer concrete actions and suggestions as part of my constructive feedback (even for the 3 of 9 that I argued Reject on; my distribution was: 3x reject, 2x in the middle, and 4x accept or A/RR). In any case, this is related to the stupendous (star-studded) panel this morning at VIS on reviewing, led by Narges Mahyar, Niklas Elmqvist, Gunther Weber, and Petra Isenberg, hosting Tamara Munzner, Han-Wei Shen, Michael Sedlmair, Melanie Tory, Helwig Hauser, and Bei Wang. Reviewing is always a hard thing in academia; it is difficult to do well and we lack the time we need. But I do genuinely believe in my responsibility as a reviewer, and was really heartened by the panel this morning! My favorite suggestion that bubbled up from the discussion? That a first-time author who submits a paper is required to give a useful review, otherwise their submission is dropped.