2022Q1 Reports: PCC

Membership

The PCC has 30 active members (including the 2 co-chairs). The full list of PCC members can be found at https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Professional_Conduct_Committee

On 1 January 2022, Donia Scott replaced Emily M. Bender as co-chair, following Emily's resignation upon her election to the ACL Executive Board. Graeme Hirst's term as co-chair ends on 31 December 2022, so we will be looking to recruit a replacements in time for a smooth hand-over.

Cases

In Q3–4 2021, the PCC dealt with two cases, which were reported to the Exec. At present, the PCC has one open case, which will result in a report to the Exec in due course.

Communication and Procedures

The PCC co-chairs are also considering updates to the procedures document based on experiences so far. These will be communicated when complete.

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.

Last year, we asked the Exec to verify that the COI policy is efficiently implemented for TACL, the CL Journal, and the new Rolling Review set up, and we asked that the Exec inform the PCC when this is complete. This request is still outstanding.

Record Keeping

We have learned that ACM has established a ‘violations database’ which tracks information about sanctions that is critical in their implementation of their anti-harassment policy. We propose that ACL should ask ACM for details of how they have set this up, to see what we can adopt. Further details: https://sigchi.org/2021/05/the-new-acm-violations-database/

Inter-Society Information Sharing

We think that ACL should consider whether to establish information sharing relationships with ACM (or other societies) and whether or under what circumstances sanctions imposed by another professional society should be mirrored by ACL (with or without further investigation) and whether or under what circumstances ACL should share information about sanctions with other professional societies.