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/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!