Desk Reject Policies

Desk Reject Policies

This document guides those who coordinate the VRST 2026 reviewing process and is directed towards the International Program Committee (IPC)—primary (1AC) and secondary coordinator (2AC). We expect you, as IPC members, to exercise your editorial authority by making fair decisions based on these desk reject guidelines.

Desk Reject Definition

Desk reject (DR) papers are submissions that clearly violate the VRST submission policies, such as anonymity, length, formatting, language, or submission topic. Desk rejections may occur at any stage for submissions that clearly violate formatting, anonymity, scope, or ethical requirements. 

Assigning the DR papers to reviewers is unnecessary and supporting a rejection at this stage offers authors the chance of improving their work for another submission/venue.

Desk Reject Process

For the initial desk reject, 1AC and 2AC will have access to any author information or other identifiable information relating to the authors and affiliation of the paper.

Desk Reject:

You are to exercise your judgment of a desk reject considering the following criteria:

  • The submission bears the authors’ names and/or affiliation (not anonymous). 
  • The submission’s length is under 4 full pages or over 9 pages of their content in Latex (not counting references), or over 8,000 words including space for figures, tables, etc. in MS Word format. 
  • The submission must not include appendices in the main paper content. 
  • The submission is incomplete (e.g., section headings given with no section content). 
  • The paper is not written in the conference language (English) or the quality of writing renders the submission unreadable. 
  • The content is clearly out of scope for the conference since the topic does not appear in the CfP topics list (e.g., formal methods for interstellar navigation and propulsion). 
  • The PDF document is corrupted or partially ill-formatted, e.g., figures are missing, tables cross the page limits, and others (forgive missing references). 
  • The document does not comply with the formatting guidelines (i.e., is using a different template) 
  • The paper’s context is intentionally promoted/advertised in the public domain with the possible disclosure of authors’ names, affiliation or other obviously identifiable information (i.e., promoting the work on social media or other publicly available web services).
Determine whether the submission warrants a desk rejection. The 1AC and 2AC should confer and reach a consensus before recommending this action. If both agree, provide a brief justification for the desk rejection. Desk rejected papers will not be sent to external reviewers. Please indicate the decision using the review form—either marking the submission as desk rejected or clearing it if no desk rejection is warranted. Desk rejects are possible at all stages.

Rejection Notification

In cases where the 1AC and 2AC exercise a desk reject which is upheld by the Program Chairs (PC), the PC will then compile and send the DR notification to the authors. The email will include the primary remarks and justification for the DR. Please keep in mind that the email content should be respectful of the authors’ work and constructive in its remarks. 

Thus, when writing the justification, provide a few encouraging words and a clear reason why there is a rejection. In some cases, you may need to write a short review to support your decision.

Thank you for your support and work to ensure the highest-quality VRST reviews. 

VRST 2026 Program Chairs 

  • Kazuyuki Fujita, Tohoku University, Japan 
  • Tham Piumsomboon, University of Canterbury, New Zealand 
  • Kangsoo Kim, University of Calgary, Canada 
  • Takefumi Hiraki, University of Tsukuba, Japan / Cluster Metaverse Lab, Japan 

program2026@vrst.acm.org

Document History:

This document was prepared by the VRST 2026 Program Chairs, drawing on reviewing guidelines from ISMAR 2026 and CHI 2026.