Conflict of Interest Enforcement
How COI rules protect review integrity across all assignment paths
PaperFox automatically enforces conflict of interest (COI) rules whenever you assign reviewers to papers. You do not need to manually check for conflicts — the system blocks any assignment that violates COI policies.
Three COI Rules
Every reviewer-paper pair is checked against three rules. If any rule matches, the assignment is blocked:
| Rule | What It Checks | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Self-conflict | Reviewer is listed as an author on the paper | Automatic — matches reviewer's name/email against the paper's author list |
| Co-author conflict | Reviewer co-authored another paper with one of the authors in the last 3 years | Automatic — detected from PaperFox submissions |
| Declared conflict | Reviewer manually declared a conflict with one of the authors | Reviewer's COI list in their settings |
All three rules use name and email matching against the paper's author list. A match on either name or email is enough to block.
Where COI Is Enforced
COI rules are enforced on every assignment path:
- Auto Assign — conflicted reviewers are excluded before the matching algorithm runs. They will never appear in suggestions.
- Manual assignment — drag-and-drop and bulk save check COI before saving. Conflicted assignments are rejected with an error message.
- AE/SE assignment — the same rules apply when assigning Associate Editors or Senior Editors to papers.
Encouraging Reviewers to Declare Conflicts
The self-conflict and co-author rules are automatic, but declared conflicts depend on reviewers maintaining their COI list. Encourage your reviewers to:
- Go to Settings → Conflicts in their account
- Add advisors, close collaborators, and co-authors from outside PaperFox
- Review their system-detected co-author list for accuracy
You can use the Notification Composer to send a reminder to all reviewers in your track.
Reviewer COI guide
Share the Managing Conflicts of Interest guide with your reviewers. It explains how to declare conflicts, how system-detected co-authors work, and how matching logic works.
Matching Logic
All three rules use the same matching:
- Name match — the conflict name appears as a substring of the author's full name (case-insensitive). For example, "Smith" matches "John Smith".
- Email match — the conflict email exactly equals the author's email (case-insensitive).
For full details, see How Matching Works in the reviewer guide.