Peer Review

For some reason, the topic of reviewing and getting papers rejected came up several times in conversations at VIS recently. Getting your work rejected and learning to deal with rejection is part of life as an academic, and it’s worthwhile to think about the process a bit.

The purpose of peer review is to separate the wheat from the chaff, the good from the bad, the brilliant from the clinically insane – you get the picture. But why? Why filter and not just let anybody publish whatever they want?

As a reviewer, you might sometimes ask yourself why people write so many bad papers. And why they bother submitting them. I certainly do. But where do they come from? Who submits bad papers? And why? It may come as a surprise, but there are good reasons to submit bad papers for review.