This document defines what constitutes a conflict of interest for the COLM review process. This documented was updates for COLM 2025. Please read this document carefully.

Anyone who plans to submit a paper as an author or a co-author, as well as reviewers and area chairs will need to create or update their OpenReview profile. You will be asked to declare two types of conflicts---domain conflicts and personal conflicts. Both types are declared by filling out appropriate sections of your OpenReview profile, as described below.

Domain conflicts (entered in Education & Career History)

Please ensure that this section accurately represents your domain conflicts for (at least) the last three years. For current or recent collaborations, including internships, you should generally use personal conflicts (recorded in the Advisors & Other Relations section). Please use domain conflicts judiciously, reserving them for cases when you have a genuine conflict of interest with the institution. Your Education & Career History is public on your OpenReview profile.

When you enter a domain conflict, none of your submissions will be visible to reviewers, area chairs, or senior area chairs who have also entered this domain conflict. Only the last three years of your and their Education & Career History will be used.

Conflicts with individual authors and program committee members (entered in Advisors & Other Relations)

The following constitutes a personal conflict:

• Family or close personal relationship
• Ph.D. advisee/advisor relationship
• Current, frequent, or recent collaboration (where recent means within the past three years)

In some cases, you may have a personal conflict that is not covered by the definition above, but would nonetheless significantly compromise the fairness of the review process. You may choose to mark such a conflict as hidden from your OpenReview profile by changing its visibility from "everyone" to "COLM XXXX Program Chairs", where XXXX stands for the conference year. If program chairs have any reason to doubt the validity of such a conflict, they may ask confidentially inquire into its nature.

Please note that OpenReview profiles are persistent across conferences, but other conferences may have a different conflict resolution policy. Any attempt to impact reviewer assignment via false declaration of conflicts may result in rejection without review.

If you have any questions about special circumstances not discussed above, please contact program chairs at colm-pcs@googlegroups.com.