Recently, an article by Seneff et al. entitled "Innate immunosuppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs" was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT). Here, we describe why this article, which contains unsubstantiated claims and misunderstandings such as "billions of lives are potentially at risk" with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, is problematic and should be retracted. We report here our request to the editor of FCT to have our rebuttal published, unfortunately rejected after three rounds of reviewing. Fighting the spread of false information requires enormous effort while receiving little or no credit for this necessary work, which often even ends up being threatened. This need for more scientific integrity is at the heart of our advocacy, and we call for large support, especially from editors and publishers, to fight more effectively against deadly disinformation.

We survey the space of three-dimensional mobile visualizations, that is, 3D abstract or spatial data on mobile 2D displays, or mobile head-mount augmented- and virtual-reality displays. As a playful “case study” we use a scenario from the film “Aliens,” in which a mobile, small-screen visualization device is used to track the movements of enemy aliens around a group of space marines. In this scenario, the marines are overrun by aliens in the ceiling, as their device fails to show them the height dimension of the space around them. We use this example to illustrate how different mobile and 3D interaction techniques could have prevented the misunderstanding in the movie, using both hypothetical descriptions of the improved movie action and a scientific discussion of these scenarios and their implications

Background: Registered Reports are publications in which study proposals are peer reviewed and pre-accepted before the study is ran. Their adoption in other disciplines has been found to promote research quality and save time and resources. Objectives: We offer a brief introduction to Registered Reports and their expected benefits for visualization research. We then report a survey of the visualization community on their attitudes towards Registered Reports. This survey takes the form of a quasi Registered Report, the first one presented at a visualization venue as far as we know. Method: We will run an online survey that will be open from the end of August until the day of the alt.VIS workshop. Results: Most respondents expressed interest in Registered Reports as an additional submission format. Junior researchers as well as researchers with prior experience of preregistration tended to be more inclined to adopt this format. However, qualitative feedback highlights several perceived drawbacks and worries about Registered Reports, such as low suitability for some types of research, and increased workload for reviewers and authors. Conclusion: While many respondents expressed interest in (and sometimes enthusiasm for) Registered Reports, many also voiced concerns that should be considered and discussed in the community. Reproducibility: All the material is available on osf.io/4nrma/.

We report evidence of an undocumented method to manipulate citation counts involving "sneaked" references. Sneaked references are registered as metadata for published scientific articles in which they do not appear. This manipulation exploits trusted relationships between various actors: publishers, the Crossref metadata registration agency, digital libraries, and bibliometric platforms. By collecting metadata from various sources, we show that extra undue references are actually sneaked in at Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration time, resulting in artificially inflated citation counts. As a case study, focusing on three journals from a given publisher, we identified at least 9% sneaked references (5978/65,836) mainly benefiting two authors. Despite not being present in the published articles, these sneaked references exist in metadata registries and inappropriately propagate to bibliometric dashboards. Furthermore, we discovered "lost" references: the studied bibliometric platform failed to index at least 56% (36,939/65,836) of the references present in the HTML version of the publications. This research led to an investigation by Crossref (confirming our findings) and to subsequent corrective actions. The extent of the distortion-due to sneaked and lost references-in the global literature remains unknown and requires further investigations. Bibliometric platforms producing citation counts should identify, quantify, and correct these flaws to provide accurate data to their patrons and prevent further citation gaming.

In this manuscript, we take a look at the dystopian future that could lie ahead of us should we fail to consider the impact of Plan S. It is the year 2030 and researchers from Europe have not been submitted their research to IEEE VIS for a number of years. We quickly retrace what has happened to lead to this unfortunate outcome in the hope to avoid it and start an important conversation that would raise awareness in the VIS community about the importance and immediacy of Plan S.

Transparent research has been a topic of intense debate in the HCI community over the last decade, and has the potential to improve the quality of the research field as well as promote more efficient use of scientific resources. To experiment with new publishing formats such as interactive articles, open review processes, and stronger transparency requirements, the authors have recently started the independent Journal of Visualization and Interaction (JoVI), a diamond open-access journal (i.e. a purely volunteer-driven effort that charges neither author nor subscription fees) for the HCI and VIS communities. We propose a SIG meeting at CHI '24 to present the current state of our experimental journal to the wider community, to solicit feedback from interested attendees, and to foster discussion on future publication processes and formats in human-computer interaction research.

In this manuscript, we critically assess the evidence around various methods of reducing mobility, and how these have impacted the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We further highlight the difficulty in assessing the effectiveness of such measures before giving directions for future research.

Background

Our aim is to highlight the benefits and limitations of open and non-anonymized peer review. Our argument is based on the literature and on responses to a survey on the reviewing process of alt.chi, a more or less open review track within the so-called Computer Human Interaction (CHI) conference, the predominant conference in the field of human-computer interaction. This track currently is the only implementation of an open peer review process in the field of human-computer interaction while, with the recent increase in interest in open scientific practices, open review is now being considered and used in other fields.

Methods

We ran an online survey with 30 responses from alt.chi authors and reviewers, collecting quantitative data using multiple-choice questions and Likert scales. Qualitative data were collected using open questions.

Results

Our main quantitative result is that respondents are more positive to open and non-anonymous reviewing for alt.chi than for other parts of the CHI conference. The qualitative data specifically highlight the benefits of open and transparent academic discussions. The data and scripts are available on https://osf.io/vuw7h/, and the figures and follow-up work on http://tiny.cc/OpenReviews.

Conclusion

While the benefits are quite clear and the system is generally well-liked by alt.chi participants, they remain reluctant to see it used in other venues. This concurs with a number of recent studies that suggest a divergence between support for a more open review process and its practical implementation.

Engaging mass audiences with crucial societal issues, such as cli-mate change, can be provided through interactive exhibits designed around the paradigm of exploranation. We present example inter-active installations in the newly founded Wadstr¨oms Exploranation Laboratory that explain various aspects of climate change while allowing public participants to explore the real scientific data. We describe how effects and causes of climate change can be communi-cated by two of the installations that allow for interactive opportuni-ties to explore the underlying data while gaining insight into climate change sources and effects. We close with implications for future work on exploranation as an emerging visualization pedagogy in public spaces.

We survey the state of the art of spatial interfaces for 3D visualization. Interaction techniques are crucial to data visualization processes and the visualization research community has been calling for more research on interaction for years. Yet, research papers focusing on interaction techniques, in particular for 3D visualization purposes, are not always published in visualization venues, sometimes making it challenging to synthesize the latest interaction and visualization results. We therefore introduce a taxonomy of interaction technique for 3D visualization. The taxonomy is organized along two axes: the primary source of input on the one hand and the visualization task they support on the other hand. Surveying the state of the art allows us to highlight specific challenges and missed opportunities for research in 3D visualization. In particular, we call for additional research in: (1) controlling 3D visualization widgets to help scientists better understand their data, (2) 3D interaction techniques for dissemination, which are under-explored yet show great promise for helping museum and science centers in their mission to share recent knowledge, and (3) developing new measures that move beyond traditional time and errors metrics for evaluating visualizations that include spatial interaction.

We present three studies that investigate the effectiveness of multiple glanceable part-to-whole proportion representations on smartwatch faces. Our goal was to understand how quickly and accurately people can make judgments about their progress toward multiple goals displayed in a small space. We designed our three studies with increasing external validity. The first study compared bar charts, radial bar charts, and text representations-shown with a digital time display. The second study added an analog time dial as a distractor to increase the complexity of the watch face. To emulate realistic viewing conditions, the third study investigated the effect of viewing angles. In Study 1 bar and radial bar charts outperformed text representations, in Study 2 adding an analog time dial as a distractor did not affect task performance, and in Study 3 only the most extreme angle led to some performance decrease. Supplementary material is available at https://osf.io/ad2z7/.

We present Moliverse, an integration of the molecular visualization framework VIAMD into the astronomical visualization software OpenSpace, allowing us to bridge the two extreme ends of the scale spectrum to show, for example, the gas composition in a planets atmosphere or molecular structures in comet trails and can empower the creation of educational exhibitions. For that purpose we do not use a linear scale traversal but break the scale continuity and show molecular simulations as focus in the context of celestial bodies. We demonstrate the application of our concept in two storytelling scenarios and envision the application both for science presentations to lay audiences and for dedicated exploration, potentially also in a molecule-only environment.

Immersive environments offer new possibilities for exploring three-dimensional volumetric or abstract data. However, typicalmid-air interaction offers little guidance to the user in interacting with the resulting visuals. Previous work has explored the use of hapticcontrols to give users tangible affordances for interacting with the data, but these controls have either: been limited in their range andresolution; were spatially fixed; or required users to manually align them with the data space. We explore the use of a robot arm withhand tracking to align tangible controls under the user’s fingers as they reach out to interact with data affordances. We begin witha study evaluating the effectiveness of a robot-extended slider control compared to a large fixed physical slider and a purely virtualmid-air slider. We find that the robot slider has similar accuracy to the physical slider but is significantly more accurate than mid-airinteraction. Further, the robot slider can be arbitrarily reoriented, opening up many new possibilities for tangible haptic interaction withimmersive visualisations. We demonstrate these possibilities through three use-cases: selection in a time-series chart; interactiveslicing of CT scans; and finally exploration of a scatter plot depicting time-varying socio-economic data

Background The practice of clinical research is strictly regulated by law. During submission and review processes, compliance of such research with the laws enforced in the country where it was conducted is not always correctly filled in by the authors or verified by the editors. Here, we report a case of a single institution for which one may find hundreds of publications with seemingly relevant ethical concerns, along with 10 months of follow-up through contacts with the editors of these articles. We thus argue for a stricter control of ethical authorization by scientific editors and we call on publishers to cooperate to this end. Methods We present an investigation of the ethics and legal aspects of 456 studies published by the IHU-MI (InstitutHospitalo-Universitaire Mediterranee Infection) in Marseille, France. Results We identified a wide range of issues with the stated research authorization and ethics of the published studies with respect to the Institutional Review Board and the approval presented. Among the studies investigated, 248 were conducted with the same ethics approval number, even though the subjects, samples, and countries of investigation were different. Thirty-nine (39) did not even contain a reference to the ethics approval number while they present research on human beings. We thus contacted the journals that published these articles and provide their responses to our concerns. It should be noted that, since our investigation and reporting to journals, PLOS has issued expressions of concerns for several publications we analyze here. Conclusion This case presents an investigation of the veracity of ethical approval,and more than 10 months of follow-up by independent researchers. We call forstricter control and cooperation in handling of these cases, including editorial requirement to upload ethical approval documents, guidelines from COPE to address such ethical concerns, and transparent editorial policies and timelines to answer such concerns. All supplementary materials are available.

This poster presents initial design steps exploring how sonification can be used to support visualization for comprehension of space and time in astronomical data. Radio signals travel at the speed of light. With a visualization of the universe, it is possible to travel faster than light and pass the radio waves leaving earth. We can then travel back in time. We propose to use sonification consisting of songs representing each year as a musical journey through space and time to create an engaging experience.

We discuss a 3D volume selection technique supported by Augmented Reality (AR) using both a tangible multi-touch device and an AR Head-Mounted Display (AR-HMD). While the HMD stereo-scopically renders the dataset, the tablet allows the user to draw a lasso that can be extruded using the tablet's relative or absolute position and orientation. This interaction is inspired by the original Tangible Brush technique. We aim, with this setup, to understand the implications of a tangible device where its absolute position now has meaning in the user's output space compared to traditional implementations where only the relative movements are captured.

The indoor climate is closely related to human health, well-being, and comfort. Thus, an understanding of the indoor climate is vital. One way to improve the indoor climates is to place an aesthetically pleasing active plant wall in the environment. By collecting data using sensors placed in and around the plant wall both the indoor climate and the status of the plant wall can be monitored and analyzed. This manuscript presents a user study with domain experts in this field with a focus on the representation of such data. The experts explored this data with a Line graph, a Horizon graph, and a Stacked area graph to better understand the status of the active plant wall and the indoor climate. Qualitative measures were collected with Think-aloud protocol and semi-structured interviews. The study resulted in four categories of analysis tasks: Overview, Detail, Perception, and Complexity. The Line graph was found to be preferred for use in providing an overview, and the Horizon graph for detailed analysis, revealing patterns and showing discernible trends, while the Stacked area graph was generally not preferred. Based on these findings, directions for future research are discussed and formulated. The results and future directions of this research can facilitate the analysis of multivariate temporal data, both for domain users and visualization researchers.

This article explores the significant role of post-publication review in maintaining research integrity and the potential of science news outlets and social media to improve the process. By examining recent cases, this article reveals the vulnerabilities of pre-publication peer review and suggests a more inclusive approach. The importance of broader public scrutiny is emphasized, as retractions in these cases occurred only after gaining significant attention on social media. The term "peer-review" should be expanded to include various experts and platforms beyond traditional academic journals. The incidents examined in this study underscore the necessity of openness and vigilance in maintaining research integrity, especially in the era of artificial intelligence and digital platforms. Researchers need to understand that research integrity extends beyond journal-led pre-publication reviews. They should also apply their scientific intellect by conducting post-publication reviews.

We may have an intuitive understanding of what is meant by mobile data visualization. Yet, in the context of data visualization, the term mobile can be interpreted in several ways. For example, it may describe visual representations shown on devices that are inherently mobile. It may also describe visualizations meant to react to viewers who are mobile relative to the display. Alternatively, it may describe visualizations that are themselves mobile across devices and screens, or in space. In this chapter, we propose several characteristics that help us to identify and describe the scope of mobile data visualization. We focus on the characteristics that, particularly in their extremes, differentiate mobile data visualization from other forms of data visualization. These characteristics give rise to dimensions of a design space for mobile data visualization, against which instances may be classified and positioned. We discuss a number of examples to illustrate how the design space makes it possible to describe and compare mobile visualizations.

Forensic investigation is a complex procedure involving experts working together to establish cause of death and report findings to legal authorities. While new technologies are being developed to provide better post-mortem imaging capabilities-including mixed-reality (MR) tools to support 3D visualisation of such data-these tools do not integrate seamlessly into their existing collaborative workflow and report authoring process, requiring extra steps, e.g. to extract imagery from the MR tool and combine with physical autopsy findings for inclusion in the report. Therefore, in this work we design and evaluate a new forensic autopsy report generation workflow and present a novel documentation system using hybrid mixed-reality approaches to integrate visualisation, voice and hand interaction, as well as collaboration and procedure recording. Our preliminary findings indicate that this approach has the potential to improve data management, aid reviewability, and thus, achieve more robust standards. Further, it potentially streamlines report generation and minimise dependency on external tools and assistance, reducing autopsy time and related costs. This system also offers significant potential for education.

Forensic practitioners analyse intrinsic 3D data daily on 2D screens. We explore novel immersive visualisation techniques that enable digital autopsy through analysis of 3D imagery. We employ a user-centred design process involving four rounds of user feedback: (1) formative interviews eliciting opportunities and requirements for mixed-reality digital autopsies; (2) a larger workshop identifying our prototypes limitations and further use-cases and interaction ideas; (3+4) two rounds of qualitative user validation of successive prototypes of novel interaction techniques for pathologist sense-making. Overall, we find MR holds great potential to enable digital autopsy, initially to supplement physical autopsy, but ultimately to replace it. We found that experts were able to use our tool to perform basic virtual autopsy tasks, MR setup promotes exploration and sense making of cause of death, and subject to limitations of current MR technology, the proposed system is a valid option for digital autopsies, according to experts feedback. - Warning: This paper contains sensitive images which are 3D visualisation of deceased people.

We compared three techniques to specify 3D positions for collaborative augmented reality (AR) visualization. AR head-mounted displays allow multiple users to share the same physical space, while keeping seamless social interactions. Interactions being key parts of exploratory visualization tasks, we adapted from the virtual reality literature three distinct techniques to specify points in 3D space, such as for placing annotations for which they cannot rely on existing data objects. We evaluated these techniques on their accuracy and speed, the users subjective workload and preferences, as well as their co-presence, mutual understanding, and behavior in collaborative tasks. Our results suggest that all the three techniques provide good mutual understanding and co-presence among collaborators. They differ, however, in the way users behave, their accuracy, and their speed.

We present our vision and steps toward implementing a collaborative 3D data analysis tool based on wearable AugmentedReality Head-Mounted Display (AR-HMD). We envision a hybrid environment which combines such AR-HMD devices withmulti-touch devices to allow multiple collaborators to visualize and jointly discuss volumetric datasets. The multi-touch devicespermit users to manipulate the datasets’ states, either publicly or privately, while also proposing means for 2D input for, e. g.,drawing annotations. The headsets allow each user to visualize the dataset in physically correct perspective stereoscopy, eitherin public or in their private space. The public space is viewed by all, with modifications shared in real-time. The private spaceallows each user to investigate the same dataset with their own preferences, for instance, with a different clipping range. Theuser can later decide to merge their private space with the public one or cancel the changes.

We study tangible touch tablets combined with Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Displays (AR-HMDs) to perform spatial 3D selections. We are primarily interested in the exploration of 3D unstructured datasets such as cloud points or volumetric datasets. AR-HMDs immerse users by showing datasets stereoscopically, and tablets provide a set of 2D exploration tools. Because AR-HMDs merge the visualization, interaction, and the users' physical spaces, users can also use the tablets as tangible objects in their 3D space. Nonetheless, the tablets' touch displays provide their own visualization and interaction spaces, separated from those of the AR-HMD. This raises several research questions compared to traditional setups. In this paper, we theorize, discuss, and study different available mappings for manual spatial selections using a tangible tablet within an AR-HMD space. We then study the use of this tablet within a 3D AR environment, compared to its use with a 2D external screen.

The process of data exploration is becoming an essential part of today’s scientific workflows. A large number of immersive visualization environments are being explored to help researchers and experts to better understand the data and to offer intuitive interaction. Despite these benefits, shown by prior research, it is still uncommon to find them being applied to realistic scientific workflows. We arguethat immersive visualization techniques will not be adopted until they can be easily integrated in the workflow of domain experts, and that specific efforts should be made to help the integration of novel and immersive visualization techniques with classically used software. 

We present a visual analytics approach for multi-level visual exploration of users' interaction strategies in an interactive digital environment. The use of interactive touchscreen exhibits in informal learning environments, such as museums and science centers, often incorporate frameworks that classify learning processes, such as Bloom's taxonomy, to achieve better user engagement and knowledge transfer. To analyze user behavior within these digital environments, interaction logs are recorded to capture diverse exploration strategies. However, analysis of such logs is challenging, especially in terms of coupling interactions and cognitive learning processes, and existing work within learning and educational contexts remains limited. To address these gaps, we develop a visual analytics approach for analyzing interaction logs that supports exploration at the individual user level and multi-user comparison. The approach utilizes algorithmic methods to identify similarities in users' interactions and reveal their exploration strategies. We motivate and illustrate our approach through an application scenario, using event sequences derived from interaction log data in an experimental study conducted with science center visitors from diverse backgrounds and demographics. The study involves 14 users completing tasks of increasing complexity, designed to stimulate different levels of cognitive learning processes. We implement our approach in an interactive visual analytics prototype system, named VISID, and together with domain experts, discover a set of task-solving exploration strategies, such as “cascading” and “nested-loop', which reflect different levels of learning processes from Bloom's taxonomy. Finally, we discuss the generalizability and scalability of the presented system and the need for further research with data acquired in the wild.