This document guides those who coordinate the ISMAR 2021 reviewing process and is directed towards the primary (1AC) and secondary coordinator (2AC).
We expect you as IPC members to exercise your editorial authority to make fair decisions that conserve time and resources. If you don’t think a submission is ready or is out of our field’s interest, you may reject it without external reviewers. Such “early rejections” keep our operations efficient, don’t hurt authors as much as late ones, and let authors move on quickly to a more suitable venue.
Desk and Quick Rejects Definition
Desk rejects (DR): Desk reject papers are submissions that clearly violate the ISMAR submission policies, such as length, language, or submission topic.
Quick rejects (QR): Quick reject papers are submissions describing research that is uncompetitive in the scope of ISMAR so that review outcome is expectable. Assigning them to reviewers appears to be unnecessary.
For Desk Rejects and Quick Rejects, please follow the process below to make a decision.
Early Reject Decision Process
Here is the decision process for early rejecting (quick or desk reject):
- Starting June 4th, each PC member scans through all their 1AC assignments.
- Identify which papers can be desk or quick rejected. Follow the criteria as indicated in the subsequent section.
- For those identified, feel free to communicate and discuss the submission with the 2AC in the case of uncertainty.
- Email PC chairs () a list of identified paper(s), and compile a short rationale for each paper referring to the desk or quick reject criteria and communicate to the PC chairs (mind conflict of interest as indicated on PCS).
- Complete all DR/QR suggestions before or on June 9th.
- For each paper that is a DR/QR candidate, do not assign reviewers yet.
- June 10th: the PC chairs will review all DR/QR candidates (and accompanying rationale) from ACs and finalize the decisions.
- June 15th: all early reject (DR/QR) reviews due
- For Desk Rejects, ACs should include a very short (1-line) rationale about why the paper should be desk-rejected.
- For Quick Rejects, ACs should include a short rationale: 1-3 paragraphs referring to 1-3 key weaknesses that represent why you think the paper is not ready for review at ISMAR.
June 15th: the PC Chairs will send out the quick and desk reject notifications along with the reasons for DR/QR.
Desk Reject Criteria
- The submission bears the authors’ names and affiliation (not anonymous)
- The submission’s length is under 4 pages or over 8 pages (not counting references, appendices or acknowledgements that are on the 9+ page).
- The submission is Incomplete (e.g., section heading given with no section content).
- Not written in the conference language (English) or the quality of writing renders the submission unreadable.
- Clearly out of scope for the conference since the topic does not appear in the CfP topics list (e.g., formal methods for interstellar navigation and propulsion).
- The pdf document is corrupted or partially ill-formatted, e.g., figures are missing, tables cross the page limits, and others (forgive missing references).
Quick Reject Criteria
- The paper lacks any form of appropriate evaluation (user study, simulation, experimental data, and others).
- The paper describes the implementation of software rather than a scientific contribution.
- Clearly insufficient literature review to contextualise and/or evaluate the proposed novelty/contribution to AR/VR/MR/XR in particular
- Paper has ethical issues (plagiarism, double submission, fake data, etc.)
- Paper is very sloppy: lots of typos, missing references, formatting issues (including large white spaces). Note that minor formatting issues should be forgiven.
Note that we do not expect a large number of quick and desk reject decisions. Both should be only exercised if the paper is, without any doubt of limited quality and does not reflect the merits of the research sufficiently.
Reject Notification
In the case the PC exercises a desk or quick reject, the PC chairs will compile and send the DR/QR notification to the authors. The email will include the primary remarks and justification for the DR/QR. Please mind that it is fundamental for both authors and the ISMAR conference that the email content is respectful of the authors’ work and constructive in its remarks.
Thus, when writing the justification, provide a few encouraging words and a clear reason why there is a rejection. In some cases, you may need to write a short review to support your decision.
Also, inform 1AC and 2AC about the decision.