Paper Submission Guidelines

IEEE Vis follows the area model, and thus a paper for IEEE VIS should be submitted to one of six areas. Make sure that you carefully read both the descriptions for each of the six areas (see also the area model FAQs) and the guidelines below before submitting your paper.

Contents

Important Submission Requirements

  • Abstract vs. full paper deadline — submission information (title, abstract, authors) are due on March 21, and full papers with supplemental material are due on March 31. The author list for a submission MUST be complete by the abstract submission deadline and cannot be changed thereafter.
  • Author information changes after the abstract deadline are not possible.
  • 9+2 pages restriction — VIS papers are strictly limited to up to 9 pages of content plus up to 2 pages of further material. These final two pages include references, links to supplemental material, figure credits, and acknowledgements sections. Papers may be shorter than this limit. See below for more details.
  • Supplemental material can be submitted until April 7. Note that after the full paper deadline (March 31), no changes in title, abstract, and main pdf of the paper are possible. As noted before, the author list MUST already be final by March 21.
  • Resubmissions are encouraged — authors are strongly encouraged to include reviews and responses for previously rejected papers in their submission to IEEE VIS.
  • Single-blind or double-blind submissions — the reviewers’ identities are not revealed. Authors may choose to anonymize their submission, but this is not required. However, for many types of papers double-blind submission is good scientific practice and strongly recommended (see below for details).

Submission System

IEEE VIS uses the Precision Conference System (PCS) to handle the submission and reviewing process. When submitting your manuscript, at the top of the PCS Submissions tab you should select ‘VGTC’ for the society, ‘VIS 2026’ for the conference/journal, and ‘VIS 2026 Full Papers’ for the track. Then, please make sure that you submit it to your intended area by choosing the appropriate area from the list of six areas. In the area description page, you can find information guiding you to choose an appropriate area along with example papers for each area.

Formatting and Language Guidelines

Papers must follow the formatting guidelines for IEEE VIS TVCG Journal submissions. Note that the template has changed in 2024 and continues to evolve (latest update expected Dec. 2025 or Jan. 2026), see below for updates on page length. Papers should include full-color figures throughout and we encourage authors to showcase their work with annotated, well described, large, and detailed graphics. We also encourage the placement of a teaser image at the top of the very first page to showcase your work visually. IEEE VIS reviewers appreciate high-quality submissions with correct English spelling and grammar: non-native English speakers may wish to enlist an English language editing service.

Anonymization

IEEE VIS allows both double-blind (anonymized) and single-blind (not anonymized) submissions. Double-blind submissions are intended for those authors who want to submit their work anonymously. Double-blind submissions should NOT include author names or institutions on the cover page of the initial submission, and authors should make an effort to ensure that there is no identity-revealing information (or formulations) in the text.

Double-blind submissions are recommended whenever possible. However, if it is not possible to anonymize without compromising scientific clarity, authors are free to reveal their identities upon submission. For some types of submissions, for example, the specific place of performance, user audience, geographical location, problem domain, partner company, etc, are critical to the contribution itself; in other cases, anonymization would be extremely difficult, as with software that has been publicly released which has a user community. For situations such as these, it may make sense to submit a paper as single-blind.

Double-blind submission applies only to the first review cycle. In case of first-round conditional acceptance, the revised version for the second round is single-blind only

Abstract Submission

Note that submission of an abstract for each paper is mandatory by March 21, and full papers are due on March 31. Additional material such as videos can be submitted by April 7. Late submissions, or submissions without a previously submitted abstract, will not be considered. Furthermore, submission information—including title, abstract, and author(s)—MUST be entered by the abstract deadline on March 21. Adding authors after the abstract deadline is not allowed. The author information is used to detect conflicts of interest when assigning papers to program committee members and reviewers, so it must be complete by the time abstracts are submitted. However, minor edits to title and abstract are allowed throughout the reviewing process, especially when requested by the reviewers.

Originality & Reuse of Text

All submissions must be novel contributions by the authors. This means that they must be original work by the authors that has not been published previously in or submitted concurrently to any conference proceeding, magazine or journal, or the like, in any language, in any form, in whole or in part, by any combination of authors.

A paper is considered published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed and archived journal, in conference proceedings, or the like, making it available to non-attendees in the form of archives (including digital). Concurrent submissions (i.e., having the same or a similar paper concurrently under review at another conference or journal/magazine) are strictly forbidden. If it is determined that an identical or substantially similar manuscript is simultaneously under consideration at another publication venue or forum (e.g., conference, journal, edited book), the manuscript will be rejected at an early stage in the review process. Further consequences are possible, as well.

Previously published text may not be reused verbatim in a VIS paper submission (unless small sections are used in the form of quotations, with references to the relevant past work). Although similarities may be inevitable in discussing background or previous work, the reuse of text can infringe copyright, and is therefore prohibited. Images from published work may only be reused if they are properly cited and the authors have obtained the rights to re-publish the images.

All related previous work by the authors must be cited and the differences from past work must be clearly explained. These citations may be cited anonymously where appropriate, for example by redacting details of the reference or by writing the citation in the third person.

The sole exception to these prohibitions is that preliminary work described in posters, contest entries, or workshops from previous VIS conferences, if not properly published, may be resubmitted provided the submission includes substantial additional new material, the previous work is cited, and the provisions of the VIS Workshop Publication Strategy are met.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism of the work of others is at all times unacceptable and will lead to the submission being removed from the review process. For more information, please see the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

All authors will therefore be required to certify on the submission form that the submitted work is the authors’ own work. All submissions are checked for plagiarism using IEEE iThenticate and potential cases inspected in detail by the APCs and OPCs.

Self-plagiarism, which is verbatim copying of text from the authors’ own prior work, is disallowed in many cases but legitimate in others.

  • Preprint: If the previous paper is a non-published preprint (for example on public repositories such as arXiv or OSF or an institutional repository such as HAL) or technical report (hosted by a specific university or organization) that does not appear in any publisher’s digital library, and the authors are identical or mostly overlapping, no citation is necessary and copying of text is allowed.
  • Thesis: If the previous paper was a thesis or dissertation, and the student is an author/co-author of the work, the work should be cited and copying of text is allowed.
  • Non-archival: If the previous paper appears at a non-archival and lightly-reviewed or non-reviewed venue such as posters, alt.chi/alt.vis, or other non-archived workshops, and the author list is identical or mostly overlapping, the work should be cited and copying of text is allowed.
  • Published: If the previous paper has gone through peer review by an established publisher and is archived in the publisher’s digital library, copying of text is not allowed.
  • Extended: If the previous paper is a substantially extended paper from previous archivally (or semi-archivally) published submission (e.g. short paper from VIS or EuroVis), with identical or mostly overlapping author list, the work should be cited and copying of text is allowed in this special case (for details see Sections 8.1.7.F and 8.2.4.G.2 of the IEEE publications manual). See Short Papers CFP guidance for more details.

Review Process

IEEE VIS papers undergo a rigorous review process involving at least three reviewers over multiple rounds of reviewing. Some papers may be desk rejected—rejected before they enter detailed peer review—by the OPCs/APCs if they determine that the submission is clearly out of scope for the VIS conferences, is written using poor language that precludes effective communication, does not follow the formatting guidelines, is obviously below IEEE VIS standard, or is otherwise not appropriate.

Decisions after the first round of reviews are usually conditional acceptances or rejections. All conditionally accepted papers come with written requirements for final acceptance. Effectively addressing these requirements in a second round version of the paper is essential and the responsibility of the authors. If the revised version of a paper fails to address feedback to the satisfaction of the reviewers, the paper will ultimately be rejected after the second reviewing round.

Junior Reviewers

Starting with VIS 2025, we introduced a “junior reviewer” program, where primary reviewers may optionally invite a Ph.D. student (their own or someone else’s), postdoc, or someone new to the field to write a review in an advisory role. Junior reviewers do not take the place of regular reviewers: primary, secondary, and tertiary reviewers will still be responsible for assessing your work. Instead, junior reviewers will provide another set of eyes on each submission, learning the craft of reviewing in the process. The primary reviewer may choose to include the junior review in the decision-making process only if both primary and secondary agree on it.

Junior reviews will appear in your regular list of reviews at the end of the first (and second) round of reviewing. However, they will be carefully marked with their expertise set as “junior”. The primary’s summary review will discuss whether and how the final review outcome incorporated the junior review.

For more details on the IEEE VIS Junior Reviewer program, see this guide.

Page Length Restrictions

Paper length may be up to a maximum of nine (9) pages with additional two (2) pages allowed only for additional material. Authors can make use of more than two pages for additional material if the total is still within the 11 (9+2) page limit. Please ensure that your submission contains no content except additional material on the (optional) 10th and 11th pages.

The additional material on the final two pages can include references, links to the supplemental material, figure credits, and acknowledgements sections. Note that the supplemental material section in the paper should only include pointers to the material and explanation of what is included in that material, not the material itself; similarly, figure credits should only include credits and copyright statements, not actual figure material (images or captions).

Manuscripts that are submitted with non-reference content such as other text, figures, or tables beyond 9 pages may be desk rejected. If authors would like to make use of more than two pages for references (in addition to at most 9 pages of content), resulting in more than 11 pages in total, special justifications must be provided with the submission. Approval for extra reference pages is given by TVCG and is not guaranteed, so it is recommended to contact the OPCs in advance of submission.

Papers may be shorter than 9 pages but still present a significant contribution. A paper does not have to include two full pages of references, but the generous allocation of these pages is meant to signify the importance that IEEE VIS attaches to authors fully anchoring their work in both its full academic context and the state of the art. The size limit for each submitted file is 300 MB.

Supplemental Material

We encourage the use of digital video to enhance a submission, particularly if part or all of the work addresses interactive techniques. Submission of code, data, evaluation protocols, or other supplemental material to increase the scrutiny of the work is encouraged. Authors are urged to make available salient parameter settings of pertinent algorithms and ideally obtain results using open source data. If specific datasets are employed, we ask that a version of these be made available where possible. Authors should not alter any supplemental materials, even externally linked supplemental material (e.g., material on OSF or GitHub repositories), after the submission deadline for this material.

While most reviewers will take supplemental material into account when conducting their reviews, the authors should ensure that their submission will stand on its own even without the supplemental material.

Continuing in 2026: The supplemental material fields for your submission in PCS will remain editable until midnight AoE on April 7. The purpose is to give authors additional time to prepare high-quality, comprehensive, and transparent supplemental materials. This includes any video figures submitted with your paper.

New for 2026: To allow authors to make active use of appendices in their work (e.g., by cross-linking them from the main text), as well as to make the job of reviewers easier in accessing these appendices, we introduce a new PDF upload field for the full paper including appendices, with a deadline of midnight AoE on March 31 (the same as for the 11-page main paper). This way reviewers can be sure that in such an extended PDF the main content is not changed after the main paper deadline on March 31, despite the extended deadline for other additional materials.

Note that there is no requirement that authors use the extra week for supplemental material. You may finalize your supplemental material in time for the regular March 31 deadline.

Resubmitting Rejected Papers

Excellent work sometimes requires addressing issues that preclude acceptance within the scope of a single review cycle. IEEE VIS welcomes revised papers resubmitted from previous years. For this reason, authors are encouraged (but not required) to include past reviews and a response letter as supplemental material when they resubmit a previously rejected paper to IEEE VIS. The purpose of this mechanism is to add continuity and memory to the process so that authors can demonstrate improvement over time, even if reviewers change from cycle to cycle. We emphasize that it is not acceptable to submit a previously rejected paper without addressing the previous review comments.

Note that submitting past reviews and a response letter is optional and at the discretion of the authors. Furthermore, past reviews are not restricted to IEEE VIS, but may include other venues where a paper has been rejected. Reviewers are instructed to not penalize resubmitted papers for past rejections, but instead view the trajectory of a resubmission based on past reviews and author response. However, as with supplemental material, reviewers are not required to take past reviews and response letters into account when conducting their review. Resubmissions should be submitted with information pertaining to the original submission as supplemental material (PDF format):

  • Past submission - previous version of the paper.
  • Previous reviews - complete reviews from the last submission.
  • Cover letter - responses to past reviews (often as summary plus details).

Authors are responsible for the content of the response letter, but effective letters tend to summarize the main points of criticism in the past reviews and explain how the new version of the paper addresses these points.

General Expectations

We expect that submissions will clearly discuss novel and significant contributions and place them in the context of prior art in the field. This discussion involves highlighting how the current contributions differ from and advance the state-of-the-art in visualization, especially, but not limited to previous work published in the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) and other leading journals and conferences including IEEE VIS, IEEE VAST, IEEE InfoVis, IEEE SciVis, ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM CHI, ACM UIST, EuroVis, Eurographics, and IEEE PacificVis.

When submitting your abstract (for the March 21 deadline) you will be asked to provide a complete list of authors even when submitting an anonymized version of the manuscript. This list is required to avoid potential conflicts of interest when assigning reviewers. Adding additional authors after the abstract deadline or the final acceptance of a paper is NOT permitted (and not possible in PCS).

Submissions will be treated as confidential communications during the review process, and thus submissions do not constitute public disclosure of any ideas therein. Submissions should contain no information or materials that will be proprietary or confidential at the time of publication (at the conference), and should cite no publications that are proprietary or confidential at the time of publication.

Each full paper accepted at IEEE VIS 2026 will be required to be presented by one of the authors. All presenters are required to register as a speaker. Diversity and inclusivity scholarships will be available to support the participation of speakers with financial needs.

Opt-in Publishing of Anonymized Reviews

Continuing in 2026, VIS allows authors of accepted papers to opt-in to having the anonymized reviews for their papers published in an OSF repository as supplemental material. The purpose of this initiative is to increase the transparency into the IEEE VIS publication process.

In practice, during final submission of the camera-ready version of your accepted paper, you will have to check a box in the submission form to allow reviews to be collected and published with your paper. Only papers for which authors agree and all reviewers explicitly agree to having their review published can be included. It is possible that one or more reviewers will disagree even if you as an author have opted in. The VIS papers chairs have no mechanism to enforce acceptance; this by necessity requires consent by all parties.

Use of Generative AI in Paper Writing

The use of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in an article (including but not limited to text, figures, images, and code) shall be disclosed in any article submitted to an IEEE publication. The AI system used shall be identified, and specific sections of the article that use AI-generated content shall be identified and accompanied by a brief explanation regarding the level at which the AI system was used to generate the content.

Note that the use of AI systems for editing and grammar enhancement is common practice and, as such, is generally outside the intent of the above policy. In this case, disclosure as noted above is optional.

Expectations for Reporting Research with Human Participants

The IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual, which governs the publication in TVCG, clearly specifies that “Authors of articles reporting on research involving human subjects or animals, including but extending beyond medical research, shall include a statement in the article that the research was performed under the oversight of an institutional review board or equivalent local/regional body, including the official name of the IRB/ethics committee, or include an explanation as to why such a review was not conducted. For research involving human subjects, authors shall also report that consent from the human subjects in the research was obtained or explain why consent was not obtained.” We therefore expect that all authors who report empirical work with human participants state that they obtained ethical clearance or that they are exempt from such a clearance (this depends on the local regulations). If possible, report the number of your ethical review. Also report, if applicable, that you obtained informed consent. For example, you could add the following: “Our experiment was approved by our university’s IRB (No. 12345678). […] At the start of the experiment, we obtained informed consent from all participants, who filled in and signed a consent form (which we share in our additional materials).” Failure to do so is not a reason for desk rejection, but could be seen as indicative of a sloppy work style by reviewers (which you may want to avoid). We will, however, check all accepted papers to ensure that the necessary statements are included.

Expectations for References

For the list of references at the end of the document, we expect from authors that they check each bibliographic entry for correctness (e.g., author names including special characters, publication years, publication type, page numbers vs. article numbers, etc.), completeness (all needed information for the respective entry type), and general consistency of reporting.

In addition, we expect that authors provide a hyperlinked DOI for each entry for which it exists to make it easy for reviewers to access the respective literature. DOIs exist for virtually all published papers, and arXiv preprints, and also some books. To do so in LaTeX, just use the DOI field in your BibTex (.bib) file and then use one of the BibTeX styles from the template that have “hyperref” in the name (abbrv-doi-hyperref.bst or the abbrv-doi-hyperref-narrow.bst).

Ethics Guidelines

IEEE VIS adheres to the VGTC ethics guidelines for reviewers and has established a Code of Conduct. In all aspects of the paper handling process, any possible violation of these guidelines is taken seriously and may be reported to the APCs/OPCs for further handling within the VIS organization. Special attention is paid to the identification and reporting of plagiarism and possibly unethical paper content is monitored carefully in the reviewing process, also. We assume a zero tolerance policy regarding harassment situations as outlined in the Code of Conduct, should any such situation occur in the paper handling process. Investigation and processing of reported cases may lead to an escalation to the IEEE level.

Paper Submission Keywords

Authors are expected to select appropriate keywords for submitted papers. These keywords are specified when submitting via PCS. Please see the VIS Paper Submission Keywords for descriptions of the keywords, sample papers, and history of how the keywords are selected.

New in 2026: Suggested Reviewers

As a new option in 2026, we allow authors to suggest external reviewers for their submission. On the submission form they can optionally enter the contact information for 1–3 people who they believe would be competent to review their work. For each suggested reviewer, please enter the person’s name, their e-mail address, their academic website, and a reason why they would be a competent reviewer. Please note that none of these reviewers can be in conflict with you and you MUST NOT contact or talk to any of the suggested reviewers about your submission. Please also note that members of the VIS IPC or Area Papers Chairs or Overall Papers Chairs cannot serve as external reviewers for a VIS submission. If the authors choose to provide such suggestions, the secondary reviewer MAY consider these suggestions, but is NOT BOUND by them.