Conflicts of Interest
Jan. 29th, 2013 01:07 pmHmm... I'm a referee for a conference and have just received an email pointing me towards a very clear conflict of interest policy (work at the same institution as some author, co-author with someone in the last two years, currently working on a project with an author, etc., etc.,). The email then asked me to log into the conference web site and mark any of the submitted papers where I have a conflict of interest with one of the authors... which is all very well except the papers have all been anonymised for blind review so I frankly haven't the foggiest idea if I have a conflict of interest or not since I have no idea who the authors are.
I mean there are 54 papers listing Argumentation as a keyword alone and while I know a lot of people in my department work on Argumentation I'm not familiar enough with any of their work to be able to identify their papers from the title alone (and my enthusiasm for going through the PDF of every one and then playing guessing games with the list of references is low) and I very much doubt they are responsible for all 54 that have been submitted.
I mean there are 54 papers listing Argumentation as a keyword alone and while I know a lot of people in my department work on Argumentation I'm not familiar enough with any of their work to be able to identify their papers from the title alone (and my enthusiasm for going through the PDF of every one and then playing guessing games with the list of references is low) and I very much doubt they are responsible for all 54 that have been submitted.