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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