Papers can be up to a maximum of eight (8) pages in length, including references and full-color figures throughout. We encourage the use of digital video to support the submission, particularly if part or all of the work covers interactive techniques. At least one author of an accepted paper must attend the symposium to present the work.

Selected papers from the symposium will be invited to appear in a special issue of Information Visualization Journal (IVS) in 2007.

The paper formatting page provides details and guidelines for preparing a proper submission. Authors must follow the style guidelines specified there.

To submit your paper, click here.

Deadlines:
Abstracts due (mandatory): Friday, March 31, 2006 5:00pm PST (Note change)
Full papers due: Friday, March 31, 2006 5:00pm PST

Information for Authors

Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by the highly interactive visual interface. People use visual analytics tools and techniques to synthesize information; derive insight from massive, dynamic, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments; and communicate assessments effectively for action. The issues stimulating this body of research provide a grand challenge in science: turning information overload into the opportunity of the decade.

Visual analytics requires interdisciplinary science beyond traditional scientific and information visualization to include statistics, mathematics, knowledge representation, management and discovery technologies, cognitive and perceptual sciences, decision sciences, and more. An important research agenda to develop the next generation suite of visual analytics technologies is available at http://nvac.pnl.gov/agenda.stm.

Papers for the symposium should help develop and/or apply the science of Visual Analytics, clearly showing an interdisciplinary approach. Topics of interest for this special issue include, but are not limited to:

• Information Analytics
• Scientific Analytics
• Interaction
• Cognitive and Perceptual Science
• Data Management and Knowledge Representation
• Knowledge Discovery
• Statistical Analytics Graphics
• Geospatial Analytics
• Presentation, Production, and Dissimilation

Paper Length

Papers can be up to a maximum of eight (8) pages in length, including full-color figures. The length of the paper should be commensurate with its contributions: for example, a useful idea presented completely and concisely in four pages is more likely to be accepted than the same idea presented in eight pages. The length limit includes figures, which may be in color because the proceedings will be printed in full color throughout, as well as references. Authors may be asked to decrease a paper's length as a condition of acceptance.

Accompanying Video

Authors are strongly encouraged to submit an accompanying video illustration to help explain their paper. Accompanying videos are limited to a maximum 5 minutes in length and 50 MB in size. Authors may submit accompanying videos through the electronic paper submission system.

Papers Review Process

Papers are peer-reviewed. The program committee will consist of senior reviewers on the program committee who will recruit additional external reviewers. Each paper will be read by at least three expert reviewers.

All papers submitted to IEEE VAST 2006 must be original, unpublished work. Any paper that has been previously published in equivalent or substantially similar form by any other conference or in any other journal will be rejected at an early stage of the review process. Furthermore, a paper identical to or substantially similar to one submitted to IEEE VAST 2006 should not be under consideration for another conference or journal during the review process. If you have a previously published paper or one that is under review that you would like to distinguish from your IEEE VAST submission, don't hesitate to clarify the distinction in the body of your paper. However, it is not acceptable to submit substantially the same paper to multiple conferences or journals, intending to withdraw the paper from the other venues as soon as the paper is accepted by one of them; at the very least, this will waste the time of program committee members and reviewers involved with the withdrawn papers.

A paper is considered published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal or in published meeting proceedings that are commercially available afterward to non-attendees. Note that work described in the Interactive Posters, Contest Entries, or Late-Breaking Hot Topics venues from previous Vis conferences and InfoVis symposia is thus not considered formally published, and may be resubmitted provided it has substantial additional new material.

Submissions are treated as confidential communications during the review process, so submission does 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 (29 October 2006), and should cite no publications that are proprietary or confidential at the time of publication.

Paper Chairs:
Pak Chung Wong, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Daniel Keim, University of Konstanz, Germany

Important Dates:

March 31, 2006	Abstract deadline
March 31, 2006	Submission deadline
June 8, 2006	Notification
August 1, 2006	Camera-ready deadline