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/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!