2019Q3 Reports: Professional Conduct Committee

Membership and Communication

The Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) presently consists of 11 regular members, serving their initial three-year terms, and two co-chairs. About six more people are receiving training at ACL 2019 in Florence and will be invited to join the PCC upon satisfactory completion of that training. We maintain a mailing list for communication amongst PCC members about general policies but avoid using email for discussion of any specific cases.

Exec action requested: The co-chair terms are meant to be 5 years, but so far the Exec has only provisionally appointed Graeme Hirst and Emily M. Bender as co-chairs for one year. We ask that the Exec extend this appointment through 2022, as our work on this began in 2018.

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.

Conflict of Interest Policy

The PCC has developed a proposal to enhance the ACL's existing Conflict of Interest policy. In particular, we have:

• Requested that Softconf develop functionality to automatically detect co-author COIs, and with a configurable parameter for how far back these should go. (Current ACL policy says 5 years, but there was some concern that this might lead to papers with no appropriate reviewers.) As of 12 July, 2019, we are waiting for email confirmation from Softconf that this has been done.

• Requested that Softconf be able to ingest additional COIs as specified (see below).

The PCC proposes that there should be a registry of non-expiring COIs, to benefit the community, in cases both of close personal relationships and of personal animosity. We believe such a registry will serve to protect people both from malicious reviewing and from suspicion of impropriety. We propose that the PCC should be the maintainer of this registry, with the following procedures:

1. The PCC will advertise the option of registering a COI.
2. The PCC on receipt of a proposed COI will vet it to make sure that there is a legitimate reason and that people are not abusing this policy — e.g., simply to avoid having their papers reviewed by someone who is critical of their preferred experimental methods.
3. All COIs, once registered, are mutual — i.e., the person registering the COI and the other party will not be able to review each other's papers.
4. The registry will include only name, email address, and reviewing software ID for the two parties. It will be the PCC's responsibility to ensure that the IDs are correct.

Legal advice required: We are unsure as to how this policy relates to the GDPR. In particular, we would prefer to be able to record this information without contacting the second party, especially in cases of, e.g., abusive relationships where that contact might trigger retaliation against the person reporting the COI. However, if this is not permitted under GDPR, then we will inform that person registering the COI that we are required to notify the other party if we register it and then only proceed to do so (both inform and register) with the consent of the person registering the COI. We ask that the ACL Exec ask legal counsel which (if either) of these two paths is appropriate.

Maintaining Records

Legal advice required: The current PCC procedures document says that incident reports will not be maintained in cases where the Complainant wishes to take no further action. This decision was probably made in light of the GDPR, but in the absence of legal counsel about it. In fact, it would be preferable to be able to maintain such records (for a set period of time, say 3 years). This could be desirable, for example, if the Complainant chooses to take action at a later date, or if further complaints are raised concerning the same Respondent.

Storage of Both Final and Working Documents

Exec action requested: The procedures indicate that incident reports are stored securely with the ACL office under certain circumstances, but we don’t yet have a specific technological solution for doing that. Would it be possible to use e.g. Microsoft or Google enterprise applications such that documents are sufficiently securely stored but also accessible by authorized persons?

The PCC procedures specify that PCC members work in teams of three to handle cases. We also strive to not use email or similarly insecure methods for sharing information. While some of the work can take place with teleconferencing software, it is unavoidable that we will need to collaboratively work on documents. Ideally, such documents would be stored in something like Google Drive, but in an account associated with the ACL rather than with PCC members’ institutions.

Academic Misconduct Cases

The PCC has recently fielded multiple complaints which are not about harassment but rather about academic misconduct, such as misrepresentation of results, malicious reviewing, or plagiarism. Since the PCC was established to handle complaints raised under the anti-harassment policy, we find that we have no authority to investigate or impose sanctions in these cases.

Exec action requested: We suggest that the ACL develop an academic misconduct policy, parallel to the anti-harassment policy, with appropriate procedures for handling cases that arise under it. The PCC, with appropriate training, could be the body that handles such complaints, but it cannot do so in the absence of a policy.

Perception of Climate at the ACL and the Role of the PCC

In July 2019, there was considerable discussion on social media of the climate within our field and the effectiveness of the ACL (and the PCC) in ensuring harassment-free experiences at our events. We are concerned that the PCC is perceived as ineffective and the ACL as disinterested in protecting its marginalized members, and that this perception further harms our ability to be effective in that it will discourage people experiencing harassment from approaching us. Considerations of confidentiality obviously prohibit any commentary on the specific case that prompted the discussion, but we also felt that silence would send an inappropriate message. Accordingly, we prepared, posted, and sent out via email the following message: https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=PCC_July2019_Statement