Conflict of Interest (CoI)

The program co-chairs require cooperation from both authors and PC members to prevent submissions from being evaluated by reviewers who have a conflict of interest. During the bidding procedure, PC members will be required to indicate potential CoIs. On the other hand, authors will be asked during the submission process to indicate any PC members with whom they share CoIs as well as the types of CoIs. That is, if they and one the authors 1) share an institutional affiliation at the time of submission; 2) had at any time in the past a supervisor/PhD student relationship; 3) have collaborated or published with in the prior two years; 4) are in some form of financial relationship, or have been at some point during the past two years; or 5) are related, or have close personal friendships. For other forms of conflict, authors must contact the chairs and explain the perceived conflict.

Program committee members who have conflicts of interest with a paper, including program co-chairs, will be excluded from discussing and reviewing the submission. Authors also need to notify the PC Chairs of any other reason or circumstance that creates a risk that professional judgement may be unduly influenced.

The chairs reserve the right to request further explanation and can remove non-mandatory conflicts at their discretion.

(Drawn from the ACM SIGMOD 2015 CFP)