2021Q1 Reports: PCC

Membership and Communication

The PCC currently has 17 active members (including the 2 co-chairs). We were not able to run a training in 2020, but will be running one online in April 2021 and expect to bring in additional members after that.

Confidentiality

In order for the policy to achieve its long-term goal of providing a harassment-free environment, due process and appropriate safeguards for confidentiality are essential. Accordingly, before each ACL-affiliated conference, we are contacting the organizers as well as ACL and chapter exec members who may be approached by individuals wishing to raise a complaint to remind them that if someone comes to them with a complaint, to direct them to a member of the PCC, to not try to collect any detailed information from the Complainant, and to keep any information they do learn (including the existence of the complaint) in the strictest confidence.

Anti-harassment procedures for online conferences

Online conferences bring new ways for harassing and disruptive behavior to occur. In 2020, the PCC assisted in developing procedures to deter, prevent, and respond to harassment and disruption in online sessions for ACL 2020, EMNLP 2020, and AACL 2020. As of 2021, this role has been handed over to the Conferences Officer, with the PCC chairs only coordinating the presence of PCC members in virtual 'office hours' and otherwise serving in an advisory capacity.

Cases

At present, the PCC has five open cases before it, including an academic misconduct case that the Exec asked us to investigate on an ad hoc basis. We expect that in three of these cases, we will be making recommendation to the Exec very shortly.

Conflict of Interest Policy

Conflicts of interest (CoI's) arise from previous collaborative or personal relationships. ACL's Conflict of Interest policy requires all reviewers, area chairs, and program chairs to determine and disclose potential CoI's in reviewing and decision making, and to not review or participate in the acceptance decision of any paper for which they have a conflict of interest.

We would like to ask the Exec to verify that the COI policy is efficiently implemented for TACL, the CL Journal, and the new rolling review set up.

Academic Misconduct Policy

In 2019, in response to the fact that the PCC was fielding complaints that fell outside the anti-harassment policy, the ACL Exec delegated the task of designing an academic misconduct policy (e.g. plagiarism, falsification of results) and associated procedures for handling cases raised under the policy to the PCC. The PCC notified the Exec in January 2021, that we were not able to complete this task. One PCC member took up the role of leading this task force (with the idea of recruiting representatives from NAACL, EACL, AACL and the journals) but then was unable to complete it. The PCC has asked the Exec to delegate this task elsewhere.