Research paper feedback: "interesting idea but does not add scientific value" Where is the border line between a novel, creative work and work that is of scientific value? I have received reviewer comments like:


  the ideas are creative and interesting  but work adds little scientific value.


What do reviewers look for when making such comments/judgements? They often do not clearly state what was missing in the paper. My field is computer science.
In my experience this is a sign that you submitted to the wrong journal/conference. For every journal/conference there is a community of researchers that like to do research in a certain way. So if a reviewer likes your work but it does not match what he thinks valuable research should look like, that is the response you get.

For example, in my area of computer networks there are researchers who do more formal analysis and others who prefer a more practical approach. So some researchers think that if you can not provide a formal proof that your system works it has low value while for others the demonstration in a real-world scenario is essential.

Once I submitted a practical paper to a more theoretically oriented conference and it got rejected with very similar wording than what you wrote. It later got accepted at a reputable application-oriented journal. The same happened the other way around.

So try to find the community that is the best fit to your work. That can include - unfortunately - a lot of trial and error. The other option is to try to suit everybody, but that includes a lot of work and you will have a hard time sticking to page limits (been there...).