Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR) organization affirms that plagiarizing another person's existing words or ideas without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source constitutes a completely unacceptable breach of academic and professional conduct. Plagiarized words and expressions also carry potentially severe ethical and legal consequences to all parties. Thus, it is the responsibility of each author and co-author to ensure that their paper attains the highest ethical standards with respect to plagiarism.

Author Responsibilities

As creators of the work, authors have a number of responsibilities when submitting their paper or manuscript to KR. They must warrant:

• That the papers they submit are their own original work.
• That their paper has not been previously published, or been accepted for publication, in a journal or another venue with formally published proceedings.
• That their paper is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.
• That the authors listed on the paper accurately reflect those persons who actually did the work and contributed to the paper in a meaningful way.
• That they have identified and acknowledged all sources used in the creation of their paper, including any graphics, images, tables, and figures, and also including any persons who do not meet the criteria for authorship.
• That they have notified KR of any conflicts of interest they might have with regard to the work.
• That all sources of financial support for the project have been disclosed, especially if it might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their paper or manuscript.
• That any fundamental errors discovered after submission of their paper will be disclosed to a program chair or other KR officer.

Program Chair Responsibilities

The program chairs have final responsibility for determining which articles or papers will be published. They may confer with members of the program committee or other designated reviewers in making this decision. The decision will be constrained by legal requirements regarding libel, copyright, or trademark infringement, and by KR's stance on plagiarism according to the preamble of this ethics and malpractice statement. The program chairs will evaluate manuscript and paper submissions without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, or citizenship.

The program chairs must maintain confidentiality of submitted materials and may not use unpublished materials in their own research without the express written consent of the author.

Program chairs are expected to make fair decisions free from commercial, political, and personal bias. They are expected to disclose all conflicts of interest and abstain from involvement in any decision about a paper in which they have such a conflict.

Program Committee Member and Reviewer Responsibilities

Program committee members and reviewers must:

• Disclose any conflicts of interest or loyalty and remove themselves from those duties or responsibilities to which the conflict relates.
• Treat the submissions assigned to them and the reviews they write, as confidential documents: Neither the papers nor the reviews may be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by a program chair, or the submitting author.
• Keep information pertaining to the submission confidential in all respects: No information, including content deliberations, decisions on papers, or discussions with other reviewers (including their identities) may be disclosed to outside persons.
• Not make use of any information contained in the material they review unless that material is available to the general public.
• Bring to the attention of the appropriate persons any information that might be reason to reject a submission.
• Report any suspicion of serious misconduct to KR.
• Evaluate submissions only for the intellectual content: Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate and reviewers should express their views clearly and support their conclusions.
• Issue their reviews in a timely fashion and notify the program chairs if prompt review is not possible, in which case the reviewers must excuse themselves from the review process.
• Take responsibility for recommending publication decisions for submissions.