Ethics of the Review Process
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Protect Ideas
As a reviewer for SIGGRAPH Asia, you have the responsibility to protect the confidentiality of the ideas represented in the papers you review. SIGGRAPH Asia submissions are by their nature not published documents. The work is considered new and proprietary by the authors; otherwise, they would not have submitted it.
Of course, authors ultimately intend to publish their work; however, many of the submitted papers will end up being rejected from this year’s conference. Thus, it is likely that the paper you have in your hands will be refined further and submitted to another journal or conference or even to SIGGRAPH Asia next year. Oftentimes, the work is considered confidential by the author’s employers. These organizations do not consider sending a paper to SIGGRAPH Asia for review to constitute a public disclosure. Consequently, you must abide by a few simple rules to protect the ideas in the submissions you receive:
- Do not show the paper to anyone else, including colleagues or students, unless you have asked them to help with your review. See the Review Process section of the Technical Papers FAQ for more details on how to properly include a colleague or student in the review process.
- Do not show videos or other materials to non-reviewers.
- Do not use ideas from papers you review to develop new ones.
- Due to the possibility of paper resubmission with reviewer continuity, you may want to keep your notes, marked manuscripts, videos, or implementations. Please keep those strictly confidential.
Avoid Conflict of Interest
As a reviewer of a SIGGRAPH Asia paper, you have power over the reviewing process. It is important for you to stay clear of any conflict of interest. There should be absolutely no question about the impartiality of reviews. Thus, if you are assigned a paper for which your review would create a possible conflict of interest, you should return the paper immediately and not submit a review. If you discover a conflict of interest after starting the review, you must recuse yourself from the assignment as soon as you discover it. Conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) situations in which:
- You work at the same institution as one of the authors.
- You have been directly involved in the work and will be receiving credit in some way. For instance, if you are a member of the author’s thesis committee, and the paper is about their thesis work, then you were involved.
- You suspect that others might see a conflict of interest in your involvement. For example, even though Microsoft Research in Seattle and Beijing are in some ways more distant than Berkeley and MIT, there is likely to be a perception that they are “both Microsoft,” so folks from one should not review papers from the other.
- You have collaborated with one of the authors in the past three years. Collaboration is usually defined as having written a paper or grant proposal together, although you should use your judgment. For instance, being co-presenters in a course, co-authors of a survey paper, or co-chairs in a recent conference does not in itself lead to a conflict of interest.
- You were the M.S./Ph.D. advisor or advisee of one of the authors. This represents a lifetime conflict of interest.
- You have unpublished or unreleased work that would get scooped by the current submission because it tackles the same problem using a similar approach. If asked to review a paper that can create such a cross-reviewing conflict, please turn down the request and immediately inform the appropriate Technical Papers Committee member or the papers admin.
The submission review process strives to prevent all identifiable conflicts (co-authorship, same affiliation, etc.) but cannot address situations such as scooping or others which are not testable automatically based on public knowledge. If you recognize the work or the author(s) and feel it could present or be seen as presenting a conflict of interest, notify the senior reviewer as soon as possible so they can find someone else to review it.
Be Serious
The quality of the review process is one of the most valuable assets of SIGGRAPH Asia. The paper publishing business at SIGGRAPH Asia is serious — careers and reputations, as well as academic tenure decisions, often hinge on these publications, and thus on your review. As an example of the perception of the quality of our review process, patent infringement cases have discussed whether something was considered novel enough to be published at SIGGRAPH Asia. You are responsible for upholding this reputation.
This does not mean that we cannot have any fun in the paper sessions. But it does mean that we have a responsibility to be serious and careful in the reviewing process. You should make an effort to do a solid and constructive review. This is obvious, but one of the complaints we have heard about the SIGGRAPH Asia review process is that some reviews can be so sketchy that it looks like the reviewer did not even seem to take the time to read the paper carefully. A casual or flippant review of a paper on which the authors have spent considerable time is not appropriate and certainly not professional. There is no dishonor in being too busy to do a good review, to realize that your competencies are not a good fit for a paper, or to realize that you have overcommitted yourself and cannot review all the papers you agreed to review. But it is a big mistake to take on too much and then not back out early enough to allow recovery. If you cannot write a high-quality review, give the paper back and say so. But please, do it early so that a suitable replacement can be found.
Be Professional
Belittling or sarcastic comments, or comments on authors’ personalities, have no place in the reviewing process. Please evaluate the work, not the authors. The most valuable comments in a review are those that help the authors understand the shortcomings of their work and how they might improve it. Be respectful and carefully explain what you consider strengths and weaknesses of a submission, and how you weigh these relative to each other, so the authors can learn from your expertise.
Remain Anonymous
All reviewers are expected to maintain anonymity forever. In particular, it is never appropriate for reviewers to reveal themselves to the authors of an accepted paper, as this could be perceived as an attempt to curry favor. Requesting citations primarily to one’s own work may thwart anonymity, so it should be carefully considered.
In Summary
Adherence to ethics makes the whole reviewing process indubitably more complicated and sometimes less efficient. But convenience, efficiency, and expediency are not good reasons to contravene ethics. It is precisely at those times when it would be easier or more efficient to bend the rules that it is most important to do the right thing. Ultimately, spending that energy and time is an investment in the long-term health of the Technical Papers sessions, the conference, and the entire community of computer graphics researchers.
