Managing Conflicts of Interest
Declare and view conflicts of interest to ensure fair review assignments
Your conflict of interest (COI) list ensures you won't be assigned to review papers from collaborators, advisors, or co-authors.
Go to Settings in the sidebar, then click Conflicts.
Three COI Rules
PaperFox enforces three COI rules when assigning reviewers to papers. All three use name and email matching against the paper's author list:
| Rule | What It Checks | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Self-conflict | You are listed as an author on the paper | Automatic — matches your name/email against the paper's author list |
| Co-author conflict | You co-authored another paper with one of the authors in the last 3 years | Automatic — detected from PaperFox submissions |
| Declared conflict | You manually declared a conflict with one of the authors | Your COI list (see below) |
If any rule matches, the assignment is blocked — for both manual assignments and auto-assignment.
Declared Conflicts
Click "Add Conflict" to declare someone whose papers you should not review — for example, your PhD advisor, a close collaborator, or a co-author from outside PaperFox.
Type a name to search existing PaperFox users. Selecting a user auto-fills their email and affiliation. You can also enter details manually for people not on PaperFox.
System-Detected Co-author Conflicts
PaperFox automatically identifies your co-authors from paper submissions on the platform. These appear under System-Detected Conflicts and update whenever a paper listing you as co-author is submitted.
System-detected conflicts show the co-author's name, email, and affiliation. Click Collaboration History to see which papers you co-authored together.
3-year window
Only co-authorships from the last 3 years are shown. Older collaborations are not considered active conflicts.
How Matching Works
All three rules use the same matching logic to compare a conflict entry against paper authors:
- Name match — the conflict's name appears as a substring of the author's full name (case-insensitive)
- Email match — the conflict's email exactly equals the author's email (case-insensitive)
A match on either name or email is enough to block the assignment.
For Track Chairs
COI is enforced on all assignment paths — auto assign, manual drag-and-drop, and bulk save. Both declared and system-detected conflicts are checked automatically. Self-conflicts (reviewer is an author on the paper) are always blocked.
See the Track Chair COI Guide for details on enforcement across assignment paths and how to encourage reviewers to declare conflicts.