ACL Sponsorship COI Policy

The ACL will adopt the following Sponsorship COI policy for all of its conferences (ACL, AACL, EACL, NAACL, EMNLP). The policy will be displayed both on the ACL website and in the Sponsorship Booklet.

(1) To ensure the independence and integrity of the conference, sponsors have no say over the paper selection process, tutorial selection process, choice of invited speakers, the composition of the program committees, or the best paper awards. The substance and structure of the conference are determined independently by the program committees and/or conference organizers.

(2) The ACL will always acknowledge our sources of financial support.

(3) The ACL will always disclose the benefits that funders receive as a condition of their contributions.

(4) Sponsors can only contribute to a general fund; they cannot specify how their contributions are spent, with the following exceptions: (4a) Sponsors are allowed to contribute toward a specific workshop hosted by an ACL conference. (4b) Sponsors are allowed to contribute directly toward specific focus areas that are documented in our sponsorship booklet, with a recent example being sponsorship for Diversity and Inclusion efforts at conferences.

(5) As one of the sponsor benefits, a Participant List may be requested by sponsors at any time and this list will contain name/email/affiliation, and country. Additionally, a separate list of those attendees wanting to talk with sponsors about employment opportunities will be made available. In both cases, inclusion in these lists is at the attendee's option. In keeping with the spirit of inclusivity, we ask that these lists not be used to invite subsets of attendees to exclusive parties or events. The lists may not be used for advertising or solicitation purposes.