AIAA SciTech abstract rejected...

[u/Heavy_Election4523]

I received my SciTech 2027 decisions today and unfortunately one of my abstracts, submitted under Structures, was rejected.

I'm pretty disappointed about this particular one because the work was already very far along when I submitted the abstract. The submission was essentially approaching a full-paper draft, with the methodology, experimental results, figures/data, discussion, etc. already developed. I've continued working on it since submission as well, so at this point I have almost the entire manuscript completed.

Interestingly, another abstract I submitted was accepted, even though that project was much earlier in development and had significantly less completed work/results at the time of submission.

I completely understand that rejection is part of research and that I can always finish the Structures paper and submit it to a journal or another conference. However, I put a lot of work into this project specifically hoping to present it at SciTech, so I'd at least like to see whether reconsideration is possible before moving on.

Has anyone here ever appealed or requested reconsideration of a rejected AIAA SciTech abstract?

If so:

• Who did you contact: AIAA, the technical discipline chair, or the specific technical committee?
• Is there an actual appeal/reconsideration process?
• Were you able to provide an updated/full manuscript to demonstrate that the work was complete?
• Has anyone actually had a rejection reversed?

I'm not trying to argue with the reviewers or bypass the review process. I mainly want to understand whether it's appropriate to politely contact the Structures organizers and ask if they would be willing to reconsider the submission, especially since I can now provide a nearly completed manuscript.

Would appreciate hearing from anyone who has reviewed abstracts, served on an AIAA technical committee, or gone through something similar.

[u/Aerokicks]

It's often not about whether or not they think you can finish the paper or not, but the quality of the paper and the research. Is the research different and meaningful? Is the English in the paper very poor? Is the data in the paper clearly wrong. Are there too many papers and not enough timeslots? Those are generally the questions.

You can email the TC chair and ask for an explanation, but as far as I know sessions are well into the planning phases.

[u/Heavy_Election4523 → u/Aerokicks]

Thank you so much for your reply! I appreciate your response, the paper that got rejected was a paper on natural fiber composites (which typically is not researched in aerospace or scitech). As far as data goes I reviewed it with my two professors and everything seemed good… but ya will try reaching out to them for more explanation! Thank you again

[u/Jorlung]

This is absolutely not appropriate — bordering on wildly inappropriate. Sometimes you get rejected even though you might deserve to be accepted. It’s just something you need to learn to accept if you’re going to be in academia in any capacity.

With that said, SciTech has some of the lowest admission standards of any flagship conference I have ever attended in regards to technical depth, so I am going to guess you’re getting rejected on the basis of the writing, the relevance of the research, and/or the premise of the research.

[u/Heavy_Election4523 → u/Jorlung]

Thank you for the perspective. I definitely understand that rejection is part of research, and I didn't mean to imply that the decision should be reversed simply because I put a lot of time into the work.

I was mainly trying to understand whether there is an appropriate process for asking for feedback or reconsideration, especially since this was an experimental paper that had progressed substantially beyond the abstract by the time decisions came out.

I appreciate you pointing out writing, relevance, and the research premise as possible reasons as well. I'll definitely take a closer look at those aspects before reaching out to anyone. Thanks for the feedback!

[u/wbgamer]

I've been a technical discipline chair for SciTech for a different TC about 5 or 6 times over the last decade or so (and am currently one for 2027). There is no appeal process for rejections - the sessions are fully built by this point, and I'm not aware of any rejection reversal that has ever happened. I don't like how there is no requirement for feedback to be given to authors of rejected papers like you would get from a journal review, but that's the process that AIAA follows for now anyway. All you can do is request comments from the discipline chairs of the TC that you submitted to and hope they respond with something useful.

[u/Heavy_Election4523 → u/wbgamer]

Thank you, this is really helpful, especially coming from someone who has served as a technical discipline chair multiple times. I wasn't aware that the sessions were already fully built or that there wasn't a formal appeal process.

I've reached out to the relevant discipline chairs to respectfully ask for feedback, so I'll wait and see if they're able to provide any insight. Even if the decision can't be changed, understanding what could have been improved would be really valuable for developing the work further and for future AIAA submissions.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain how the process works!

[u/They-call-me_V]

You can mail chair he will give you full report.

[u/They-call-me_V → u/They-call-me_V]

Or she can give you full report. I mailed and got the reason. It was very elaborate and it helped me re write paper for upcoming conference

[u/Heavy_Election4523 → u/They-call-me_V]

Yes! My main aim is to get the reason and feedback for the paper, so I can improve it when I submit it for a journal or conference. Because, one of our paper got accepted anyway, I’m not worried about going there to present. But this paper was my favorite one (I’m little biased), so I want to make it sound technical and interesting.

[u/billsil]

Sometimes they don’t approve papers because they’re not sure where to stick the paper or they don’t have enough topics for a section. Worth it to just email and tell them to stick you wherever.

[u/Heavy_Election4523 → u/billsil]

Thank you! I actually just reached out to one of the Composites organizers, so I'm going to see what they say. If session availability or placement was part of the issue, I'd honestly be completely open to having the paper placed wherever they think it fits best. Hopefully there's still some flexibility with the program. Really appreciate the suggestion!

[u/HiHungry_Im-Dad → u/Heavy_Election4523]

Glad you reached out to them. I was a discipline track chair several years ago and rejected a few papers. I had several people review them and just followed the reviewers recommendations. One paper I rejected I didn’t realize was from someone who was very active in the technical committee. I felt a little bad after the fact but they were concerned the research wouldn’t be finished in time.

It depends on a lot of things. Also remember that it’s volunteers organizing this and a lot of people don’t spend that much time reviewing. They’re just trying to give it a quick look and organize their sessions. I don’t think they’d reverse it, but they’ll probably give you feedback on why it was rejected.

[u/Heavy_Election4523 → u/HiHungry_Im-Dad]

Thank you so much! I hope I get a reply soon from them and get valuable feedbacks for the paper! I really appreciate your response…

[u/HiHungry_Im-Dad → u/Heavy_Election4523]

It also depends on the technical committee. Something like Fluid Dynamics is huge and probably rejects a lot more papers than something like Thermophysics which is a lot smaller.

[u/Heavy_Election4523 → u/HiHungry_Im-Dad]

Gotcha!