Policies

Quick Reject Policy

The Editors-in-Chief make the final Accept/Reject decision on all papers. Sometimes, the Editors-in-Chief reject papers without assigning AE's for the following reasons:

1. topic clearly out of scope, irrelevant, or outdated
2. work clearly does not meet sufficient standards of novelty or quality of presentation
3. plagiarism, self-plagiarism, or simultaneous submission
4. manuscript incomplete, overlength, or incorrectly formatted

Appeals Policy

If an author has concerns about how their paper was handled, that author should first bring those concerns to the Editor-in-chief who made the decision, who will consult with the Associate Editor who handled the processing of the paper. If the concerns are not addressed, the author should bring the concerns to the other Editor-in-Chief, who will re-examine the materials, and both EICs will then confer to make the final editorial decision.

If the concerns are still not adequately addressed then the author may appeal to the Chair of the

ACM Publications Board, in accordance with ACM policy.

New Copyright and Open Access Policy

New options for ACM authors to manage rights and permissions for their work: ACM introduces a new publishing license agreement, an updated copyright transfer agreement, and a new author-pays option which allows for perpetual open access through the ACM Digital Library. For more information, visit the ACM Author Rights webpage at

authors.acm.org.

EIC Conflict of Interest Policy

ACM ToMPECS has the following Conflict of Interest policy for papers submitted by an Editor-in-Chief. If one of the EiCs has a conflict with a paper but is not an author, the other EiC will assign an associate editor who will then select reviewers, obtain the reviews, and make a decision about the paper, perhaps in consultation with other associate editors. If both EiC's have a conflict of interest with a paper, Associate Editor "NAME" will serve as Alternate Interim Chief Editor ("Alice" in the text below) for papers submitted by the EiC.

ACM conflict of interest policy for papers submitted by an EiC

The purpose of this policy is to address the conflict-of-interest (COI) that arises when an editor-in-chief (EiC) of an ACM journal is an author of a paper submitted to that journal. There are other COI issues that arise in handling papers for a journal. The scope of this policy is, however, strictly limited to the specific issue of EiC authored papers.

ACM has traditionally given its EiCs considerable freedom in establishing policy for each journal. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work well for the diverse computing disciplines addressed by different ACM journals. This policy therefore establishes a minimum baseline that all ACM journals should follow. Each journal can, in addition, establish additional requirements, at discretion of the journal's EiC.

ACM does permit an EiC to be an author of a paper in the EiC's journal. Outright prohibition of EiC authorship is considered too severe for at least three reasons. First, it can unduly penalize the EiC's co-authors. In several computing disciplines the ACM Transactions is the premier, and sometimes the sole high quality, archival research publication. A strict prohibition will impact the EiC's co-authors especially if they are just starting their research careers. Second, it can prevent high-quality papers from appearing in ACM journals. ACM's stated mission is to be the publisher of choice. Good work should be evaluated on its merits and not on authorship. Third, it can be a disincentive for leading researchers to serve as EiC, especially insofar as this prohibition would affect co-authors particularly graduate students. Many ACM Conferences do not permit the Program Chair to submit papers to the Conference. The three arguments given above apply with some force to ACM Conferences also. However, the multi-year terms of EiCs makes a more compelling case for journals than for conferences.

1. The EiC will submit the paper to an Associate Editor who is specifically designated for this purpose and explicitly identified in the web pages for that journal. The designated Associate Editor must have agreed to accept this responsibility and should not be a collaborator of the EiC or from the same organization as the EiC.
2. The Associate Editor designated in step 1 (say Alice) will not process the paper herself, but will hand it to another Associate Editor (say Bob) whose identity will not be disclosed to the EiC. Bob will obtain reviews and make all decisions regarding processing of the paper (such as reject, requires major revision and second review, conditional accept, accept, etc.) and will convey these decisions to the EiC by way of Alice. Alice will keep the identity of Bob anonymous from the EiC, and Bob will keep the identity of the reviewers anonymous from Alice.
3. In case of guest edited special issues, such as based on papers invited from Conferences, the guest editor will make the final decision directly but will annonymize all reviewer information in corresponding with the authors, including the EiC.
4. In order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, existing standards of acceptability must be rigorously applied when considering papers (co-)authored by EiCs. Papers which are marginal in any way should be rejected.