SIGPLAN values diversity in the composition of the organizing and reviewing committees for its events. There is a broad pool of people qualified to serve on these committees, but each year organizers must select only a subset of them. Committee membership is a form of professional recognition and leadership, so organizers must take care to select members fairly and to represent the breadth of the relevant community.
Diversity should be considered both within the current committee and across successive editions of an event, so that opportunities to serve are distributed fairly over time.
This policy applies to Program Committees and other reviewing committees, including External Review Committees. The principles should also be considered when forming organizing committees. Their application may be scaled to the size, purpose, and expertise requirements of each committee.
When forming a reviewing committee, organizers should consider:
Coverage of the event’s topics. The committee should collectively have the expertise needed to evaluate submissions across the scope of the event.
Rotation and continuity. Each year’s committee should be substantially distinct from those of previous years, while allowing limited overlap to provide continuity. Members should generally not serve on the same conference’s Program Committee more often than once every three years. Ordinarily, overlap from one year to the next should be less than 15%, and no one should serve for more than two consecutive years.
Institutional diversity. Ordinarily, no more than two members should come from the same institution. For large committees, this limit may instead be interpreted as no more than 10% of the committee. For the purpose of applying this limit and determining institutional conflicts, a large organization with multiple campuses or organizational units may be treated as comprising separate institutions where those units are comparable in size and organizational independence to typical academic institutions.
Type of institution. The committee should, where relevant, include members from academia, industry, government laboratories, and other research organizations active in the area.
Career stage and experience. The committee should include an appropriate mix of junior, mid-career, and senior members of the community. Conference Program Committee members should normally hold a PhD or have comparable research qualifications by the submission deadline. For affiliated workshops and similar events, suitably qualified senior PhD students may serve where appropriate.
Geographic distribution. Members should be drawn from the regions of the world active in the relevant research area.
Diversity of backgrounds. The committee should reflect diversity in gender and in ethnic, cultural, and other backgrounds relevant to representation in the community.
These considerations should be applied holistically rather than as independent quotas. Organizers should be prepared to explain significant departures from them, particularly where a committee is large enough that broader representation could reasonably have been achieved.
The Program Chair should also avoid selecting a committee that appears to favor current or former students, postdoctoral researchers, colleagues, or collaborators. The committee should not be overly concentrated among frequent collaborators, close colleagues, or members of the same institution or research group.
Proposed reviewing committees for SIGPLAN-sponsored conferences and SIGPLAN-approved workshops must be submitted to the SIGPLAN Vice Chair for approval by the SIGPLAN Executive Committee, using the PC proposal spreadsheet.
Further guidance on committee selection, approval, invitations, and committee management is available in the Guidelines for Program Chairs.