Author | Lightnews

Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · 14h

The #ieeevis 2025 OPCs, working under the direction of the VIS Steering Committee, has just released 52 anonymized peer reviews for 16 accepted papers to be published at VIS 2025. We hope each year will add to this repository. OSF link here: osf.io/s9j5b/ (download the spreadsheet directly)

OSF

osf.io

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · 3d

New favorite use of LLMs: asking it to explain my own slides from last year back to me because I was too stupid/lazy to write proper speaker notes at the time.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · 14d

The duality of man (peer review edition):
- System paper: “where is the user study?”
- Evaluation paper: “where is the system description?”

😑

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · 15d

Thinking of your academic paper as less your magnum opus and more as a line of dialogue in a greater conversation can take the pressure off scientific publishing. Here are my most recent thoughts on "Science as a Conversation":

niklaselmqvist.medium.com/science-as-a...

Science as a Conversation

When do you know that your paper has done enough?

niklaselmqvist.medium.com

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · 28d

Thanks, Dominik—especially since some of your research represents examples of software that *will* live on! 😅 And I fully agree with your point about protocol design as well as the value of software artifacts, such as to help others reproduce or compare themselves to your work.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · 29d

Sorry to say it, but if you're a Ph.D. student, chances are that your code will not live long past your degree. Instead, you should strive for separating your research contribution from their implementation (which counts as validation). Read more:
niklaselmqvist.medium.com/your-code-wi...

Your Code Will Be Dead in Ten Years

But Your Ideas (Hopefully) Won’t Be

niklaselmqvist.medium.com

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Sep 26

Only my second UIST paper ever, but please check it out! I can’t go to South Korea (too much travel this fall already), but @clemens.klokmose.net and @maski89.bsky.social will be there to show the flag!

Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose @clemens.klokmose.net · Sep 26

Next week I’ll be at ACM UIST 2025 in Busan, South Korea, where @maski89.bsky.social will be presenting our work on Spatialstrates. In this project, we address the gap between everyday laptop-based computing and immersive experiences with augmented or virtual reality headsets.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Sep 25

In an act of true courage, @clemens.klokmose.net opens the JavaScript study lecture in our @csaudk.bsky.social HCI class by challenging the students to “ask me anything” about web development, and then proceeds to live code solutions to all contenders. Pictured after white-knuckling drag and drop.

Clemens in a blue shirt gesturing proudly in front of an empty whiteboard and two large projections of a VS Code source code window showing a JavaScript implementation of drag and drop.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Sep 5

Professor Corrie is on deck for the faculty meeting at @csaudk.bsky.social!

Small Australian Shepherd sitting under the table in a conference room with a big screen that reads “Faculty Meeting” in the background.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Aug 21

The way we prompt AI has been bothering me for a long time. Accidentally hitting Enter sends off prompts—but surely they should be carefully crafted, not fired off haphazardly? I wrote about why this frustrates me so much and what we should do instead. niklaselmqvist.medium.com/to-prompt-is...

To Prompt Is Human, To Specify Divine

Rethinking how we should interact with Generative AI

niklaselmqvist.medium.com

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Jun 21

This bowling alley has just rickrolled its entire clientele. Gotta respect the hustle.

Empty bowling lanes with wall to wall screens showing Rick Astley from the 1987 music video “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Jun 10

After seeing one too many #ieeevis papers that were clearly resubmits with little or no revision from the previous iteration, we VIS 2025 OPCs just wrote this blog article (ingeniously named if you ask me): ieeevis.org/year/2025/bl...

Déjà Review - When You Have Seen the Paper Before

As IEEE VIS Overall Papers Chairs, we’ve observed a troubling pattern that undermines the integrity of our peer review process: papers rejected from one venu...

ieeevis.org

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Jun 10

Absolutely. I worry that we are losing our agility and flexibility of mind as a field, and replacing it with intellectual and methodological snobbery.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Jun 10

"This is not vis."

I've heard this criticism throughout my entire career. But when does upholding #ieeevis standards cross the line into harmful gatekeeping that stifles innovation?

In my new blog post, I argue that our field's vitality depends on embracing new ideas, from accessibility to AI.

“This Is Not Vis”

On the perils of gatekeeping in peer review

niklaselmqvist.medium.com

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Jun 6

Since I’m finding myself in this curious position once more (my fifth time as papers co-chair for #ieeevis), I thought I would post my 2017 blog post on not trying to appealing paper reject decisions (it’s unlikely to work/peer review/not scalable): niklaselmqvist.medium.com/an-appeal-no...

An Appeal Not to Appeal

This year, I served as papers co-chair for IEEE InfoVis for the second time (2016 and 2017), which was an excellent (if work-intensive at…

niklaselmqvist.medium.com

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · Jun 6

Friendly PSA: When either happily rejoicing or angrily complaining about an accept or reject decision from #ieeevis, remember to remove your friendly neighborhood OPCs from the CC. We don't mind to see these emails (especially the happy ones), but it invariably causes embarrassment after. 😅

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 27

New w/ Vaishali Dhanoa, Anton Wolter, @gabymlp.bsky.social, Hans-Jörg Schulz on patterns for "agentic visualization" - AI agents aiding vis w/o losing human agency:
- Roles (what agents do)
- Communication (how agents share)
- Coordination (how agents collaborate)

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2505.19101

Agentic Visualization: Extracting Agent-based Design Patterns from Visualization Systems

Autonomous agents powered by Large Language Models are transforming AI, creating an imperative for the visualization field to embrace agentic frameworks. However, our field's focus on a human in the s...

arxiv.org

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 23

Wow, that's wrong, in my opinion. Resubmitting without revision is disrespectful and wasteful of people's time.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 23

And if you’re reviewing a paper you have seen before, it is absolutely appropriate to make this known in the public or private parts of the review. You’re in a unique position to tell us how the work has been revised (if at all). If the authors ignored your feedback, you can absolutely reiterate it.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 23

It baffles me how some #ieeevis authors cynically resubmit their rejected papers to the conference without making the most basic of revisions. The level of disrespect towards prior reviewers is staggering. No, you can’t just pass off your own failures on “Reviewer 2”. Own them, and revise your work.

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 10

It’s a good point, and I believe VIS allows enough latitude for authors to surprise the reviewers, but at the same time the scope of the revisions should represent a minor revision whereas many CHI R&Rs feel like major ones. For CHI, an R&R is certainly NOT safely ashore and many get rejected.

Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 10

While I can sympathize with this, I still think that clarity is better and yields less uncertainty. Listing required changes will allow an author to decide whether it is even worth trying to address them. Being vague wastes people’s time.

Most journal reviews list changes to make, after all. /end

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 10

Now, VIS conditional accepts are arguably “less conditional” than CHI’s “revise & resubmit” (although we do reject papers in the second round every year), which may explain this difference.

In the CHI AC guidelines, it is stated that not prescribing changes leaves the agency with the author. 2/

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 10

VIS and CHI both have two review rounds, but there is a significant difference: VIS summary reviews are supposed to list required changes for acceptance, whereas CHI meta reviews explicitly should NOT include them.

#ieeevis PC members should keep this in mind: please DO list required changes. 1/

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Niklas Elmqvist @nelmqvist.bsky.social · May 7

Incidentally, this allows us to give student reviewers a weight of 0 (for PCS weighted scores). This is useful for conveying the advisory nature of student reviews. Here we are trying to protect review integrity so that an entirely uncalibrated and unmentored student does not have major influence.

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