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[bibliothecula]

For those of you who have served on conference program committees, have you ever given feedback (as a committee or individual) on a proposal you didn't accept? I have never seen this happen, but have a few people who want feedback regarding their rejections from a conference I'm helping with.

[hegemony]

No, yikes, what a waste of time.  They should get feedback from their own colleagues or advisors.  Feedback would just give them an opening to argue with you, is my guess.  Just Say No.

[fiona]

I gave feedback to rejectees once, and got exactly what Hegemony describes: arguments and wounded feelings.

Well, it's like telling a student why s/h/it got a D. No one likes to hear it.

Just have a bland rejection ("Doesn't suit our needs; we had so many fabulous proposals") and let it go at that. Or if you want a general statement about what makes a winning proposal, you can send that along. But don't do individual critiques.

The Fiona

[afacultymember]

I don't know. My conferences use electronic reporting systems that log ALL the reviewer comments. So, unless a reviewer simply doesn't fill out the comments section, those comments are transmitted win, lose or draw.

Having been on the other side, I have always appreciated comments for papers accepted and not accepted. Two papers rejected by conferences were later published without significant modification (one as a book chapter, one as a peer-reviewed journal article). I still don't know why those particular papers weren't accepted at those particular conferences. My suspicion is that they simply didn't fit the culture of the areas under which they were considered. Sometimes our academic subcultures are not well communicated to those outside the clique.

I make it a point to always give fair criticism to papers, particularly when they're rejected. Some graduate students in some programs can go years without good criticism. Sometimes, a few straight words can save someone years of frustration and confusion. Even if those words sound harsh ("Try reading X book/you must address this framework/This claim seems to ignore 30 years of theory building without clarification, etc.").

Why else do we do this if not to help each other become more rigorous and to advance each other's work?

[pink_]

Nope--I usually send a generic "I wish I could take them all but we only have room on the panel for 3" email, and I usually am sincere about that.  For each of the panels that I have chaired, I have gotten mostly very solid proposals and the selection has really been about which ones would fit together best.

[ea15792]

I don't know. My conferences use electronic reporting systems that log ALL the reviewer comments. So, unless a reviewer simply doesn't fill out the comments section, those comments are transmitted win, lose or draw.

This is how we provide feedback as well.  Ocassionally, I've gotten phone calls from people who really don't understand why their paper wasn't accepted.   Sometimes the paper can be excellent, but just doesn't fit with our conference.   We often get people outside of field who submit to us, and their papers are the most likely to get rejected.

[iomhaigh]

No, and we rarely contact people that we don't accept, actually.  There is one conference that always sends mass email rejections.  Otherwise, the individual people convening panels rarely send rejections. 

We suck, in my field, at certain niceties. 

[grasshopper]

My suspicion is that they simply didn't fit the culture of the areas under which they were considered. Sometimes our academic subcultures are not well communicated to those outside the clique.

I have this problem. I know that quite often, panel organizers have a very clear idea of how they want the panel to proceed, and indeed, often know exactly who they want on that panel. I look forward to the day when I know the ins and outs of conferencing well enough to be able to read between those lines.