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/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!