How Visualization PhD Students Cope with Paper Rejections
This addresses the problem of coping with rejection for visualization PhD students, but is incremental as it applies known qualitative methods to a specific academic context.
The study investigated how visualization PhD students handle paper rejections through a questionnaire with 24 participants, finding they generally cope well and develop strategies like discussing reviews with collaborators, making resubmission plans, and viewing rejection as a learning experience.
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.