Vviewpoints

I M A G E B Y S C O T T N O R R I S P H O T O G R A P H Y

Computing Ethics
Where Review
Goes Wrong
Examining professional misconduct
among academic publication examiners.

the two papers was 3% and by explaining that the shorter workshop paper presented a new algorithm developed and validated after submission of the earlier paper. The conference chairs and the program committee served as the judge and the jury; we had no arbitrators, no voice. We were punished without being given a chance to rebut.

Trying to publish a paper that was rejected earlier or trying to publish new results are part of the publication process, and researchers should not fear being charged with professional misconduct for doing their job. The review process is unbalanced with concentration of power in the hands of reviewers. In both incidents, when a reviewer charged wrongdoing, there was an immediate presumption of guilt followed by punishment. By the time we were contacted, our guilt and punishment was fait accompli. We felt helpless and wronged, with no possibility of our names being cleared of wrongdoing. When a reviewer suspects something amiss, it is important that editors contact the authors for an explanation. The final decision should reflect input from both sides. In order for authors to understand and accept a decision, they should feel that their voices were heard.

The review process should incor-
porate the ethos of research and the
publication process. A review proc-
ess is adversarial since reviewers are
tasked with checking that a paper is
correct, relevant, and original, while
In the first instance I went through
several rounds of reviews, revisions,
and resubmissions. All but one of the
reviewers accepted the paper, and the
paper was eventually rejected. I resub-
mitted the paper to another journal.

Unbeknownst to me, the reviewer who
had previously rejected the paper was
contacted as reviewer again. The result
was that the editor, in an email sent to
all reviewers, charged me with know-
ingly submitting a paper with incor-
rect results. It had never occurred to
me that I was doing anything wrong. I
felt scared, helpless, ashamed, alone,
and confused. It took a while to dig out
proof that I had checked the veracity of
the paper. I forwarded to the editor all
previous reviews and my responses. I
also forwarded my email correspon-
dences with a mathematics researcher
who had helped me verify proofs and
address the reviewer’s concerns. The
review process was restarted with the
same set of four reviewers; as I expect-
ed, the paper was rejected. I rarely sub-
mitted to a journal again because I was
terrified of being charged with trying to
“shop” a rejected paper.

The second accusation of professional misconduct happened recently. Some months ago, my student and I submitted a paper to a conference. A couple of months later, we submitted new research—generated since the last submission—to a workshop connected to the conference. The conference paper was rejected; instead of getting reviews for the workshop paper, we were accused of unethical conduct for submitting a paper that had significant overlap with another paper in review, and for not citing the paper in review. No proof or examples of the overlap were presented. There was no attempt to contact us authors prior to the accusation and negative decision concerning our workshop submission. We tried to contest the decision by sending proof that the writing overlap between

DOI: 10.1145/3041045