were offered a fast track submission into a regular TVCG journal issue, where ... and at most three honorable mentions are picked by three senior researchers in ...
Preface Message from the Paper Chairs and Guest Editors These are the proceedings of the IEEE Visualization Conference 2011 (Vis 2011) and the IEEE Information Visualization Conference 2011 (InfoVis 2011) held during October 23 to 28, 2011 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The ability to use computing technology to create effective imagery for analysis, understanding, and communication continues to inspire visualization researchers around the world. Both conferences spotlighted the most innovative and highquality research results. Historical acceptance rates for the conferences can be found at: http://vgtc.org/wpmu/techcom/conferences/sponsored-events/.
Vis and InfoVis 2011 Paper Chairs and Guest Editors Frank van Ham IBM Research
Raghu Machiraju The Ohio State University
Review and awards process All papers appearing in this issue have undergone a two round review process. In the first round review, four expert reviewers review the work. The paper chairs select the primary and secondary reviewers from the international program committee, who then recruit two external experts. After completion of all reviews, the primary reviewer leads an online discussion phase, which results in an initial recommendation for acceptance or rejection and a set of modifications that are deemed necessary. Based on this recommendation, the paper chairs select an initial set of papers for preliminary acceptance. The authors of these papers are given the opportunity to refine and resubmit their work. In the second round review, IPC members check whether the changes made are sufficient to warrant final acceptance. Based on their input, paper chairs make the final decisions for papers appearing at the conference. Papers that still required more work after the second round review were offered a fast track submission into a regular TVCG journal issue, where the initial set of reviews make up the first regular TVCG review round. This year 6 Vis papers and 1 InfoVis paper were offered this possibility. This year, all conferences appearing at Visweek have synchronized the process for best paper awards according to the following procedure. Each conference’s best paper and at most three honorable mentions are picked by three senior researchers in the conference’s field. These candidates are selected by the Paper Chairs and vetted by the respective conference’s steering committees. Candidates can serve at most three years on the best paper committee and special care is taken to avoid potential conflicts of interest when picking candidates. After final acceptances have been announced, the paper chairs send the best paper committee three to six of the top rated papers. This selection is made based on chairs’ reading of the papers, review scores (corrected for overly harsh or lenient reviews) as well as potential impact of the research. The best paper committee members then review all papers independently, and arrive at a consensus afterwards. Best papers and honorable mentions are then announced in the program at the start of the conference. As in previous years, many individuals have contributed a great deal of time and energy to making the IEEE Visweek 2011 conference and this special issue a success. We would like to thank the authors of all submitted papers, the members of both Program Committees and Best Paper Committees, as well as all the other reviewers for their many hours of hard xwork.
Klaus Mueller STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY
Gerik Scheuermann Universität Leipzig
Chris Weaver University of Oklahoma
Vis 2011 The IEEE Visualization 2011 papers program, contained in this special issue, accepted 49 papers describing stateof-the art tools, techniques and technology in the field of visualization. They were selected from 194 submissions by an international program committee of 63 members and supported by 794 reviews from 406 experts. The acceptance rate for IEEE Visualization 2011 is 25%. The use of paper categories - technique papers, system papers, design studies, evaluation papers, and model papers - has been more embraced by our community. Technique papers (with 121 of the submissions) are the strongest suit in our community, followed by design study papers (with 42 of the submissions). System papers (with 15 of the submissions), evaluation papers (with 9 of the submissions), and model papers (with 7 of the submissions) are harder papers to write and yet are important to drive our field forward. The diversity of the work in our community becomes clear only when one looks at all the varying topics dealt with in our community. While medical and biological application areas are very strong, we see more and more people looking at the navigation of parameter spaces for computational simulation. While the interest and engagement in volumetric rendering as well as vector and tensor visualization is still strong we see more and more researchers using concepts from information theory to detect salient features in the data.
Best Papers This year, we are grateful to Min Chen, Torsten Möller, and Robert Moorhead to serve on the best paper committee. The paper chairs first selected six papers based on the reviews, the novelty, and the recommendation by reviewers and the program committee. These papers were then forwarded to the best paper committee for a final ranking as outlined above. As of writing, the selection of the best paper is still in progress and is anticipated to be complete by mid- September 2011.
InfoVis 2011 IEEE InfoVis 2011 is the 17th annual InfoVis meeting and our fifth year as the IEEE Information Visualization Conference. InfoVis remains the primary meeting in the field of information visualization. Computer-based information visualization centers around helping people explore or explain data through interactive software that exploits the capabilities of the human perceptual system. A key challenge in information visualization is designing a cognitively useful spatial mapping of a data set that is not inherently spatial and supplementing the mapping with interaction techniques that allow people to intuitively explore the data set. Information visualization draws on the intellectual history of several traditions, including computer graphics, humancomputer interaction, cognitive psychology, semiotics, graphic design, statistical graphics, cartography, and art. The synthesis of relevant ideas from these fields with new methodologies and techniques made possible by interactive computation are critical for helping people keep pace with the torrents of data confronting them. This year’s conference saw a healthy mix of theory, technique, and evaluation papers befitting the continued growth of the field into a scientific discipline. The InfoVis Conference received 172 submissions, which is a 27% increase over last year and sets a new record in the number of submissions to the conference. Technique and design study papers (71 and 45 submissions respectively) formed the majority of those, with system (22), evaluation (18), and theory (16) papers contributing the rest. From the initial set of submissions, 45 papers were given a conditional acceptance. Ultimately, 44 of the conditionally accepted papers were accepted to appear at the conference, with the remaining paper recommended for fast track through the regular TVCG journal review process. The overall acceptance rate was 26%, identical to last year.
materials, and producing these conference proceedings. This year, the IEEE Visualization and IEEE Information Visualization Paper Chairs again made use of the PCS review system. We wish to acknowledge James Stewart for his outstanding and timely support. We warmly thank the IEEE VisWeek General Chairs, David Laidlaw and Ross Whitaker, as well as the IEEE Vis and InfoVis Conference Chairs, David Laidlaw and Jean-Daniel Fekete, for their valuable advice at every stage. We thank the Program Chairs, Gautam Chaudhary and Rachael Brady, for their considerable help in numerous ways. The IEEE Visweek 2011 conference also features panels, tutorials, workshops, posters, the visualization contest, birds-of-a-feather meetings, the doctoral colloquium, the discovery exhibition, the art show, and the interactive demonstrations lab. None of these would exist were it not for the time and effort spent by our community members. We especially acknowledge the active support of Ming Lin as Editor-in-Chief of TVCG, and Amitabh Varshney as Chair of VGTC. Lastly, we would like to thank the TVCG team, Alicia Stickley, Erin Espriu, Steve Wareham, Hilda Carman, Joyce Arnold, and Kathleen Henry for their time and many efforts in helping VGTC produce these proceedings.
Best Papers The best paper committee consisting of Sheelagh Carpendale, John Stasko, and Jarke van Wijk, made its selection from the 6 highest rated papers as determined by the reviewers. This year “Context-Preserving Visual Links” by Markus Steinberger, Manuela Waldner, Marc Streit, Alexander Lex, and Dieter Schmalstieg was selected as best paper. This article describes and evaluates an alternative highlighting technique that enhances existing information displays with explicit links between related pieces of information. The Best Paper award recognizes this paper as an example of excellent work that will stimulate further discussion and motivate new directions in the field. There are also two honorable mentions for excellent contributions to the state of the art: “Benefitting InfoVis with Visual Difficulties”, by Jessica Hullman, Eytan Adar, and Priti Shah; and “Local Affine Multidimensional Projection” by Paulo Joia, Fernando V. Paulovich, Danilo Coimbra, José A. Cuminato, and Luis G. Nonato.
Acknowledgments As usual, the papers chairs are indebted to the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC) Publications team, especially the Publications Coordinator, Meghan Haley, for coordinating schedules, collecting xi
