CHAIR HOW-TO: Manage Conflicts

OVERVIEW

Managing conflicts is one of the most important tasks for a conference chair.

CMT provides two mechanisms of conflict detection between reviewers and authors in a conference: Individual-based conflict management and Domain-based conflict management.
When used together, conflicts inferred from conflicts domains and conflicts specified by authors and/or PC members will both be considered during paper assignment process.

SUGGESTED SETTING

Depending upon the Conflict settings, there may be a time where a reviewer is assigned a paper, entered the review, and then disappeared from the paper. The Paper also is no longer in the Reviewer Console.
This is likely due to either the author or the reviewer entering a domain conflict in the middle of the review phase. (Click here for more reasons)

To mitigate this, select 'Do not allow editing personal domain conflicts'.
If this is a multi-track conference, do this for all tracks.

Then deselect the setting for the track (if it is a multi-track conference) that is currently enabled for submission phase (and then re-select it after the submission phase has been completed).

INDIVIDUAL-BASED CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

Authors can enter individual-based conflicts in two ways: for themselves and for each of their submissions.
While it may seem superfluous to have both, not all authors will log in to CMT and chairs still need their conflicts.

Conflicts between individual authors and reviewers, meta-reviewers, or senior meta-reviewers include:

• A co-author
• A colleague (In last 2 years)
• A collaborator (in last 2 years)
• A Primary Thesis Advisor at anytime
• A relative or a friend

Individual-based conflict management is the easiest way for the chair of a small conference to manage Conflicts of Interest (COI).

INDIVIDUALLY ENTERED CONFLICTS

When an author enters individual conflicts for reviewers, meta-reviewers or senior meta-reviewers, none of the author's submissions will be visible to them.

• Individual conflicts can be enabled by going to ‘Settings>Features>Conflict’ and selecting the checkbox ‘Enable authors to mark individual conflicts with PC members, and vice versa.’ Click ‘Save changes.’

• Authors (and PC members) can enter their conflicts by clicking the name dropdown from their home console and selecting ‘Individual Conflicts.’

• The Individual Conflicts page can be filtered by first name, last name and/or organization. This example is filtered by organization.

Note

Author must have submitted a paper for the list of prospective conflicts to show.

• Select the conflicts that are pertinent.

INDIVIDUAL CONFLICTS PER SUBMISSION

When individual conflicts with reviewers, meta-reviewers, or senior meta-reviewers are entered for a submission, that submission will not be visible to them.

Note

Individual conflicts entered for one submission are not automatically added to that author's other submissions.

• Individual Submission conflicts can be enabled by going to ‘Settings>Features>Conflict’ and selecting the checkbox ‘Enable authors to mark submission conflicts with PC members.’ Click ‘Save changes.’

• Upon submitting a paper, the Author will get to the ‘Edit Conflicts of Interest’ page.
  Just like the ‘Individual Conflicts’ page, this can be filtered by first name, last name and/or organization. This example is filtered for ‘Contoso’ in the organization column.

• Click the edit button and choose one or more of the five options – co-author; colleague; collaborator; Primary Thesis Advisor; relative or friend – then click ‘Done.’

DO NOT ALLOW EDITING OF INDIVIDUAL CONFLICTS

The Chair enables this after all of the Individual Conflicts are entered. This removes the ‘Individual Conflicts’ selection from the name dropdown.

Before enabling ‘Do not allow editing of individual conflicts (with ‘Enable authors to mark individual conflicts with PC members, and vice versa’ enabled) the ‘Individual Conflicts’ selection from the name dropdown is visible.

After enabling ‘Do not allow editing of individual conflicts (with ‘Enable authors to mark individual conflicts with PC members, and vice versa’ enabled) the ‘Individual Conflicts’ selection from the name dropdown is not visible.

ALLOW ENTERING OF INDIVIDUAL CONFLICTS IF NONE ENTERED

• After the Chairs lock down the entering of individual conflicts, enabling this allows those users to enter their individual conflicts if they have not done so prior to the lock down.

OTHER ROLES

Individual conflicts for Reviewers, Meta-Reviewers, or Senior Meta-Reviewers can be entered into CMT during the bidding phase.

Note

When an individual conflict is entered by a Reviewer, Meta-Reviewer, or a Senior Meta-Reviewer, they will not be able to see submissions from those authors with whom they have conflicts.

DOMAIN-BASED CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

Authors may be asked to enter domain conflicts in two ways: for themselves and for each of their submissions. While it may seem superfluous to have both, not all authors will log in to CMT and chairs still need their conflicts.

Domain-based conflict management requires authors and PC members to enter conflict domains of all institutions with those they have conflicts of interest, such as institutions for which they have worked or have had very close collaboration within the last couple of years (e.g. washington.edu; mit.edu; microsoft.com).

Any overlap between conflicting domains provided by any author of a paper and reviewer is considered as a conflict for paper assignment purposes.

Conflicts with domains (i.e., people at universities, companies, or other institutions):

• Current, recent, or recurring employment, honorarium, or stipend
• Candidate for employment
• Many current, recent, or recurring collaborations

Note

“Recent” means within the 3 years. Most people will only need to enter the domains of their current and recent employers.
For current, recent, or recurring collaborations, please use individual conflicts unless you have many such collaborations at an institution.

Domain conflict management is used for large conferences, i.e. with more papers and reviewers, however, this approach may have the propensity to become complex. We do not suggest domain conflict management for small conferences.

HOW TO FIND DOMAIN CONFLICT THAT INVALIDATED ASSIGNMENT

Depending upon the Conflict settings, there may be a time where a Reviewer is assigned a paper, entered the review, and then disappeared from the paper. The Paper also is no longer in the Reviewer Console.
This is likely due to either the author or the Reviewer entering a domain conflict in the middle of the review phase.

Here we have the paper, the Reviewer assigned and the review:

The Reviewer enters a new domain conflict - 'contoso.com'.

Before:

After:

As now seen in the Chair Console, the Reviewer is no longer a reviewer for the paper.

To find the conflict, open the Submission Summary page.
(For simplicity, we only have the one conflict and Reviewer).

The domain conflict set by the Author is 'contoso.com'.

As a Chair, impersonate the Reviewer (Track Chairs cannot impersonate users, only Chairs can do that) and lookup the domain conflicts. You can see it has 'contoso.com'.

INDIVIDUALLY ENTERED DOMAIN CONFLICTS

If a domain entered by an author of a paper has been entered by any reviewers, meta-reviewers, or senior meta-reviewers, the paper will not be visible to them.

• Individual domain conflicts can be enabled by going to "Settings -> Features -> Conflict" page and selecting the checkbox "Enable personal domain conflicts for authors and PC members". Click ‘Save changes.’

• Authors (and PC members) can enter their domain conflicts by clicking the name dropdown from their home console and selecting ‘Domain Conflicts.’

• On the ‘Domain Conflicts’ page, please enter the domain of each institution (separated by a semicolon) for which you have a conflict of interest (example: mit.edu; ox.ac.uk; microsoft.com). More specifically, please list domains of all institutions for which you have worked, or have had very close collaboration, within the last 3 years. Then click ‘Save.’

DOMAIN CONFLICTS PER SUBMISSION

When a domain conflict is entered for a submission, that submission will not be visible to reviewers, meta-reviewers or senior meta-reviewers who have also entered that domain.

Note

Domain conflicts entered for one submission is not automatically added to that author's other submissions.

• Domain conflict for submissions can be enabled by going to 'Settings>Features>Conflict' page and selecting the checkbox 'Enable submission domain conflicts.'
  Click 'Save changes.'

This setting adds a section in the Submission Form for the Authors to enter their domain conflicts.

DO NOT ALLOW EDITING OF INDIVIDUAL DOMAIN CONFLICTS

• The Chair enables this after all of the Individual Domain Conflicts are entered.

Note

This setting disallows any changes in personal domain conflicts for all roles except Chair.

• Go to the Settings tab, selct 'Features>Conflict,' then check the box 'Do not allow editing of individual domain conflicts.' Click 'Save changes.'

Author:

Chair:

ALLOW ENTERING OF DOMAIN CONFLICTS IF NONE ENTERED

• After the Chairs lock down the entering of domain conflicts, enabling this allows those users to enter their domain conflicts if they have not done so prior to the lock down.

OTHER ROLES

When a domain conflict is entered by a reviewer, meta-reviewer, or a senior meta-reviewer, they will not be able to see submissions from authors who have also included that domain in submissions conflict domains.

Note

Please enter ALL domain conflicts; CMT does not automatically add the domain from your email address. If an institution has multiple domains (e.g., fb.com and facebook.com), please enter all of them.
Please do NOT enter the domain of public email providers (i.e., gmail.com, hotmail.com, etc.).

EDIT DOMAIN CONFLICTS FOR A USER

• From the Chair Console click on ‘Users> Conference User,’ which puts you on the Manage Conference Users page.

• Filter for the user whose domain conflicts you want to edit, click ‘More’> ‘Edit Domain Conflicts.’

• The Domain Conflict page appears. Here you may edit, then save your changes.

DBLP CO-AUTHORSHIP CONFLICTS

• The Chairs enable this setting to use dblp co-authorship to detect conflicts between authors and PC members.

Important

New DBLP data is pulled on the second day of each month which could result in new conflicts being found between reviewers and the papers that are already assigned to them.
Selecting 'Do not compute new dblp conflicts' will freeze the DBLP update for the remainder of the conference.

More on dblp here.

• After assignments have been completed and to prevent assignments from being invalidated by new dblp conflicts, enable 'Do not compute new dblp conflicts.'
• Click 'Save changes.'

EXPLAINING THE SUBMISSION SUMMARY PAGE

1. • In the Submission Summary page, an author may see co-author conflicts. These are system generated and have to do with that particular co-author also being a PC member.

Note

This has nothing to do with any domain conflicts or individual conflicts that the author may have entered.

2. • After the author enters domain and individual conflicts.
     The author's view of the 'Conflicts of Interest' section of the Submission Summary doesn't change.
     Only the Chair is able to see those conflicts entered.

3. • Submission Summary before editing a user role
     There are two co-authors on a paper. Neither is a PC member. The authors' view of the Submission Summary doesn't show any conflicts.

4. • Submission Summary after editing a user role
     The chair modifies the role of one of the authors to 'Reviewer' for the conference. The 'Conflicts of Interest' section of the Submission Summary will automatically change as soon as the author's role is modified to that of a PC member.

Related: Dispute Conflicts