Conflict resolution for full and short papers

1. General Conflict of Interest regulation

The TPC Chairs of ACM Multimedia 2014 have carefully devised a protocol for regulating the Conflict of Interest (CoI) in reviewing and managing full and short papers:

• TPC Chairs will not actively contribute to any paper submission to ACM Multimedia 2014.
• A protocol has been defined for the Area Chairs to make sure they and their reviewers have properly declared all potential conflicts regarding the papers submitted to their tracks. The realization of the protocol is monitored by the TPC Chairs.

NOTE: The above is possible for TPC Chairs and Area Chairs because they have access to the names and affiliation of the authors of submitted papers. Similarly to the role of the members of a journal editorial board, they will benefit from this information to regulate CoI as well as possible. The access to this information will, however, have no influence on managing the papers. This is supported by the fact that the decision on paper acceptance/rejection is finalized during the TPC meeting, and for which the recommendations of the Area Chairs only serve as input.

2. Managing the submissions made by Area Chairs

If an Area Chair (AC) is a co-author of a paper submitted to his/her own track X, then during the paper exchange among tracks (see Submission Instructions for details) this paper will be moved to the "meta" track to be handled there, which is managed by the TPC Chairs and out of the influence of the author-AC. The other ACs from track X not having their papers submitted in track X then also become co-chairs of the meta track, where they can invite additional reviewers from their domain to handle this paper. Then, during the preparation for the TPC meeting, these papers of all author-ACs will be ranked just like in any other track and the list of papers with enter the discussion during the meeting. If one of these papers is discussed, then the corresponding author-AC will leave the room.

NOTE: A limit of maximally 1 paper to own track is imposed to an AC. Also, the above plan is devised assuming that not all ACs from track X will submit to this track. If this is about to happen, TPC Chairs will resolve this by adding an additional AC to that area to manage the papers of other ACs transferred to the meta track.