STACS Code of Conduct
Conflict of Interest
Authors will be invited to give a list of persons with a Conflict of Interest (COI). A Conflict of Interest is limited to the following categories:
- Family member or close friend.
- Ph.D. advisor or advisee (no time limit), or postdoctoral or undergraduate mentor or mentee within the past five years.
- Person with the same affiliation.
- Involved in an alleged incident of harassment. (It is not required that the incident be reported.)
- Reviewer owes author a favour (e.g., recently requested a reference letter).
- Frequent or recent collaborator (within last 5 years) cannot objectively review your work.
If you are unsure about a conflict in which a reviewer may have positive bias towards your paper, we recommend erring on the side of not declaring it since PC members and sub-reviewers will be also asked if they feel that they can fairly evaluate your paper. If an author believes that they have a valid reason for a Conflict of Interest not listed above, then she or he can contact PC chairs. Falsely declared conflicts (i.e., do not satisfy one of the listed reasons) risk rejection without consideration of merit. When PC chairs have doubt about claimed Conflict of Interest, they may request that STACS advocates confidentially verify the conflict. If authors are uncertain, they are encouraged to email PC chairs or STACS advocates. Authors will be asked to declare conflicts with PC members during submission, but an author can contact PC chairs directly if she or he has a conflict with an individual who is likely to be asked to serve as a sub-reviewer for the paper.
STACS Code of Conduct
STACS 2024 intends to join http://safetoc.org. Registering for STACS 2024 thus will likely require that you agree to follow the Code of Conduct described below.
STACS is committed to be a respectful forum for its participants, free from any violence, discrimination or harassment of any nature. All STACS attendees are expected to behave accordingly.
If you experience or witness violence, discrimination, harassment or other unethical behaviour at the conference, we encourage you to seek advice and remedy through one or more of the following options:
- • Consult with the SafeToC advocates of STACS (see below).
- • Report to the conference chair, the PC chairs or the Steering Committee chair.
The chairs are entitled to remove registered participants from the conference (without refunding the conference fees) if they are deemed to pose an ethical risk to other participants. The conference chair may contact the local university committee dedicated to address violence, unethical behaviour or harassment of any kind. Besides having an appointment with the victim, this committee can assist with medical support and with taking legal action.