How to get your paper published at the Computers and Graphics Journal (NOT!). Tongue in Cheek presentation for Elsevier writers' workshop

1. Computers & Graphics
University of Toronto April 30 2014
Top 10 ways to get your paper rejected

2. Joaquim Jorge
EiC 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

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 1500+ as EiC

6. The Journal in 2013
Published since 1975
EiC since 2007
Experience to share

7. Lots of Submissions
698

8. Quick Decisions
5 Weeks

9. Reject Lots of Papers
82%

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

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

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

13. DO NOT READ THE
INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS
10
www.flickr.com/photos/foxypar4

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

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

16. DO NOT CHECK FOR
GRAMMAR OR SPELLING
9
www.flickr.com/photos/jasoneppink/

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

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

19. PROVIDE NO MOTIVATION
8
flickr.com/photos/ladydragonflyherworld

20. 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

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

22. PROVIDE NO RESULTS
7
flickr.com/photos/31031835@N0

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

24. 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!)

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

26. Can you provide
Code ?
Examples ?
Video ?

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

28. IGNORE THE READER
6
flickr.com/photos/derricksphotos

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

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

31. 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

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

33. WASTE SPACE WITH
IRRELEVANT DETAILS
5
flickr.com/photos/dphiffer

34. 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…”

35. 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 ?

36. OBFUSCATE YOUR WRITING
4
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37. Adopt a rambling style
Focus ? What focus ?
Provide at least 7 +- 2 ideas per page
Digress
Treat reviewers like mushrooms

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

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

40. RESUBMIT YOUR REJECTED
PAPER WITH NO CHANGES
3
flickr.com/photos/calliope

41. 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

42. Resubmit as IS
Personally OffendeD!
No kidding (I wish I could show)

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

44. 2PLAGIARIZE
flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07

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

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

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

48. CONTRIBUTION ?

49. 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”

50. 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

51. 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

52. 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

53. 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