Social-media promotion of papers is prohibited during the review period. Explicitly excluded from this ban is the automatic posting of new preprints by arXiv.
Background:
The current PAMITC policies prohibit authors from issuing press releases or talking with the press about papers that are under review at IEEE/CVF conferences. This facilitates double blind review and helps preserve the public trust in the scientific peer review process.
With the increasing use of social media to distribute scientific results, this policy needs updating. In particular, social media campaigns have largely taken over from traditional press releases. The current policies are somewhat ambiguous about such posting but may be interpreted as allowing this as long as the authors do not say the paper is under review at an IEEE/CVF meeting. This loophole efficiently violates the principles of the original press ban.
Why is this an issue? Groups with large followings and the resources to mount visible social media promotions received significant attention for work that is under review. Reviewers are exposed to this work and the attention it receives can bias their judgment — if so many people on social media are excited, mustn’t it be good? Groups with fewer followers or that refrain from such campaigns are disadvantaged. This biases the peer review process and reduces trust in its fairness.
Peer review is the backbone of science. The process helps detect mistakes or false claims before the work appears in public. This reduces the chance that work needs to be retracted and, hence, increases public trust in science and the scientific process. Science depends on this trust both for funding and for its independence. Anything that undermines this trust can have long term negative consequences for basic research.
FAQ:
What about arXiv papers?
The field has decided that dissemination on arXiv facilitates the rapid spread of information within the field. arXiv papers are not “published” but are understood to be “pre-publications”. This open pre-publication process provides a form of community review where problems can be detected (much like formal peer review). arXiv papers are often corrected and modified; the site is set up to support this scientific process of revision. Putting a paper on arXiv for early analysis by experts is very different from publicly promoting work on social media to a broad audience.
arXiv tweets new papers. Is that a violation?
No. This is an automatic process and does not constitute the authors promoting their work. arXiv tweets are largely followed by experts in the field and not the general public. The work is presented in its entirety and a pre-publication and can be judged as such. This differs from, for example, promotional videos posted on social media.
Doesn’t this slow down scientific progress?
No. Experts in the field make scientific progress, not the general public. The exemption for arXiv means that the research community still gets early access to research and can evaluate it as non-peer-reviewed.