2020Q4 Exec Meeting Minutes

Minutes of 2020Q4 ACL Exec Meeting

online meeting, Nov. 11, 2020

Rolling Review Proposal

The exec supports running a pilot at emnlp2021.

Todo: Will form a sub-committee to select three editors-in-chief. The sub-committee contains exec members who overlap with the review committee. They will make a proposal and send it to the exec for approval. (Hinrich)

Establishment of an ACL Advisory Board

A common concern is how to maintain and use the "corporate memory" of ACL.

Practices of other organizations:

• IJCAI (several years ago): all the past presidents can be called on as advisory board.
• ACM: longer-term leaderships.

The advisory board can have a broader pool, with past presidents, general chairs & PC chairs of the conferences as well as other people who have the corporate memory of ACL. The Exec can get more feedback from them before a new initiative goes to the memberships.

Code of Ethics

Three issues discussed:

• Issue-1: What should we do if an organization or a company violates the code of ethics?
  • Can the code of ethics only be applied to individuals and to research work? Would we ever be in a position to take action against an organization?
  • Does it need to be approved by the exec before we accept the sponsorship commitment from an organization and examine if it violates the code?
  • What if an ACL president is from the organization that we believe violates the code?

• Issue-2: What should we do if a paper violates the code of ethics?
  • We don't have an instruction on implementing the code of ethics to make all the conferences organize in the same way. We should enforce a uniform standard on that.

• Issue-3: requirement on the use of data released by the companies like facebook and twitter.
  • If the work in a paper violates the data usage agreement when they acquired the data, the paper should be rejected. (Hinrich)
  • People may have different opinions on if or not a paper violates the requirement. Who should make the decision? (Rada)
  • Can add a principle in the call-for-papers on the data usage. Cannot specify all the different data sets. (Ming)
  • Need an ethics officer on the Exec, at least for a certain period. (Barbara)
  • Ask the reviewers to check if a paper violates the requirement during paper reviewing of a conference. (Natalie)

D&I Initiatives

Initiative-1: D&I funding

• Each conference, in their working budget, should guarantee a base amount (or a percentage of budget) for D&I from the start of conference planning. The sponsorship director will then help get additional fund from sponsors for D&I.
• The bids of conferences should formally include the D&I items, which can be added to the instructions for bidders on wiki.
• The D&I committee should be more involved in conference bidding and site selection process.

Initiative-2: ACL-X

• The Exec is in favor of the proposal.

Initiative-3: D&I training

• Natalie is still working on the D&I training proposal for the decision makers, including the ACL exec, D&I chair, general chair and PC of the conferences.

Conference Organization and Conference Handbook

• PC chairs must submit a proposal that describes the innovations they want to do and changes they want to make. Someone on the exec (conference officer as the most natural person) should check the proposal and sign off on it. -- Todo: Will first circulate a draft and then move a motion. (Hinrich)
• Conference handbook: should add contents about the virtual conferences and hybrid conferences.
• Can leave some room for the chapters to make decisions. But the ACL exec needs to know the changes and discuss them in advance.
• Best paper awards should be standardized. – Todo: Will make a proposal (based on the one from Jonathan Kummerfeld?) to the exec. (Rada)

Long-term PCO Support

• Recommend MCI as our preferred vendor, which is big (65 offices worldwide) and professional.
• Negotiate a "Preferred Vendor Agreement" or something similar, but not a formal contract.
• Proposal: Put it in the bid instruction that the bidders can use either MCI or their local PCOs.
• Todo: Will first try with EACL conferences, and recommend it for the other conferences. (Priscilla, Sharon)