Comment by lqet
2 days ago
> * A group of colluding authors writes and submits papers to the conference.
> * The colluders share, amongst themselves, the titles of each other's papers, violating the tenet of blind reviewing and creating a significant undisclosed conflict of interest.
> * The colluders hide conflicts of interest, then bid to review these papers, sometimes from duplicate accounts, in an attempt to be assigned to these papers as reviewers.
Is it that common that conference reviewers also submit papers to the conference? Wouldn't that alone already be a conflict of interest? (After all, you then have an interest in dismissing as many papers as possible to increase the likelihood of your own paper being accepted). And how do you create "duplicate accounts"? The conferences I have submitted to, and reviewed for, all had an invitation-like process for potential reviewers.
Many bodies that fund academic work will happily pay for you to fly to a conference and stay at a hotel if you're presenting a paper at the conference - but they'll be a lot less willing if you aren't presenting anything. So a decent % of attendees will be presenting papers.
And finding reviewers who know their stuff, who'll work for free, and who'll review thoroughly in a short timescale isn't easy.
Not only common, it's become a requirement to review papers if you submit one yourself. Yeah it's not ideal for multiple reasons (what you said + prompt engineering grad students dismissing proper papers without having the slighest idea about the field), but the amount of submissions is so incredibly huge that it's impossible to do it any other way.
Then I guess I should be grateful that my academic niche is so small.
Even if this reviewers weren't allowed to be submitters, if there is more than one conference, or the conference runs for more than one year, the same mechanism can be used.