(for Papers Authored by ACM TODS Editor-in-Chief)

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.

(This policy is that recommended by the ACM Publications Board; see Conflict of Interest Policy For Papers Authored By ACM Editors-in-Chief.)

The EiC has appointed Professor Gerhard Weikum as the designated Associate Editor.

(for Papers (co-)Authored by ACM TODS Associate Editors)

1. The EiC will submit the paper to an Associate Editor to handle, as is the normal procedure. However, the identity of the AE handling the paper will not be revealed to the authors. Instead, the EiC will serve as an intermediator in all communications between the AE handling the submission and the authors.

2. All other aspects of the handling of such submissions will follow normal procedure.