top 10 ways to get your paper rejected at Computers and Graphics Journal

How NOT to get your paper published at the Computers and Graphics Journal. Top 10 mistakes you must do to help Editors and Reviewers Reject your paper. Also, some career advice for Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Researchers. Contains advice to students and researchers on traps and pitfalls to avoid.

1. Computers & Graphics University of Toronto September 18 2019 Top 10 ways to get your paper rejected

2. Joaquim Jorge EiC Computers & Graphics Journal Chair, ACM/SIGGRAPH Specialized Conferences Committee Head of Group Visualization and Multimodal Interfaces @ INESC-ID Lisboa http:// web.tecnico.ulisboa.pt /jorgej Research Interests: Calligraphic Interaction, Multimodal Interfaces, Graphical Modeling

3. Writing is Important GREAT ideas not enough Need to Communicate them

4. What I know about good writing

5. What I know about bad writing Author – papers rejected due to bad writing Reviewer – many bad papers (1000+) Editor – handled 3000+ as EiC

6. The Journal in 2018 Published since 1975 EiC since 2007 Experience to share

7. Lots of Submissions Per Year 400+

8. Quick Decisions 3.3 Weeks ( avg )

9. Reject Lots of Papers 82%

10. Scientists MUST Write Great ideas are worthless if nobody can understand them

11. Desk Rejects make us look good

12. Desk Rejects make us look good Less Reviewers invited Shorter response time Higher rejection rate Happier reviewers

13. Top 10 Ways to Get Your Paper Rejected Make Editor’s life easier!

14. Do NOT Read the Instructions to Authors 10 www.flickr.com /photos/foxypar4

15. Content Pattern Recognition Robotic Motion Controllers Graph Theory Algorithms for Neural Networks Control Theory  Desk Reject

16. Ignore the style instructions Author names (CAG is double-blind) Old-style manuscripts Reviewers in Graphics are picky  Check requirements

17. Do NOT Check for Grammar or spelling 9

18. Be Sloppy! Tehre is rseraceh taht sohws grammer or bad spllenig are not iapomrtnt Tihs is bseauce the hamun mnid cmnepstoaes

19. Sloppy writing why bother ? Reviewers turned off It is not their responsibility to get it right

20. Provide no motivation 8 flickr.com /photos/ ladydragonflyherworld

21. 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

22. NO BACKGROUND  Remove Acknowledgements / References Or, IF You Must “Submitted” “In Preparation” “Private Communication” “Well known” results published in Aramaic

23. Provide no results 7 flickr.com /photos/31031835@N08

24. NO RESULTS If you provide no results it will be impossible to duplicate your work Thus your assertions cannot be disproved

25. 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!)

26. Unsubstantiated Conclusions Do not overreach Do your data support your claims ? Can you really claim your approach is free of limitations or shortcomings ?

27. Do Not Provide Code Examples Video High-Res Images

28. Overstate Claims Overselling a problem akin to lack of results Will get your paper rejected “Truth in advertising”

29. Ignore the reader 6 flickr.com /photos/ derricksphotos

30. Audience knows as much as you You know your contribution So they know  you don’t need to write it!

31. Audience knows as much as you If you could do the research… so should they (they’re experts, right?)  No need for details!

32. 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

33. The 4 Don ’ ts Don’t discuss tradeoffs / alternatives comment results give insights provide take-home messages

34. WASTE SPACE with irrelevant details 5 flickr.com /photos/ dphiffer

35. 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…”

36. 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 ?

37. OBFUSCATE YOUR WRITING 4 flickr.com /photos/ pinksherbet

38. Adopt a rambling style Focus ? What focus ? Provide at least 7 +- 2 ideas per page Digress Treat reviewers like mushrooms

39. OBFUSCATE Use the Passive Voice. Always. LOTS of acronyms Change notations: χ ( ξ ) instead of f(x) Preferably mid-paper

40. OBFUSCATE No sentence smaller than a paragraph No paragraphs! Gender, Subject and Number should not agree Use Footnotes Recurse

41. Resubmit your rejected paper with no changes 3 flickr.com /photos/calliope

42. 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

43. Resubmit as IS P ersonally O ffende D ! No kidding (I wish I could show)

44. The 3Rs Reduce – get rejected in NO TIME (thanks!) Reuse – receive the Same Reviews Recycle – and Rejection Slip!

45. 2 plagiarize flickr.com /photos/29233640@N07

46. Need a previous work section? Just copy somebody else’s! Or your own´s ! Reuse, Recycle, Resubmit! (see previous slide)

47. RRR Those people are The Specialists, Unlikely to check, read or review your paper…. Right ?

48. Plagiarize Submit the same paper to different journals and conferences at the same time

49. Contribution ? 1

50. 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”

51. Suggestions (new problems!) 255 th 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

52. 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

53. 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

54. Useful Pointers How to have your abstract rejected by van Leunen & Lipton web.nchu.edu.tw/~jlwu/articles/AbstractReject.pdf How to Get Your SIGGRAPH Paper Rejected by Jim Kajiya www. siggraph .org /sites/default/files/kajiya.pdf ‎ How to Write a Paper by Aaron Hertzman www.dgp.toronto.edu /~hertzman/advice/writing-technical-papers.pdf How to Run a Paper Mill by John Woodwark