Policies and Procedures
Refining the Bylaws

Amended February 17, 2021

This document provides details regarding the implementation of some of the Bylaws. The structure of this document follows the one of the Bylaws.

Article III - Section 2

The list of ex officio members is updated once a year, namely right after the conference.

Article III - Section 3

The level of the dues per year should be of the order of the yearly membership fees for professional organizations that sponsor conferences related to the Conference, such as ACM and IEEE.

Article IV - Section 4

For filling the position selected by the Board, other than the Secretary, the following procedure can be considered. The President sends out a call for nominations, and after a window of at least two weeks presents all the nominees to the Board. For some time the President attempts to reach a unanimous consensus. If unsuccessful, the President runs an instant runoff vote with a window of at least two weeks, where the ballots are shared with the Board after the voting window is over.

In filling the position of the Secretary, it is the President-Elect or the President (whomever the person would serve under as Secretary) who nominates the candidate; the Board votes on the proposal.

The President runs the nominations for the position selected by the members of the Foundation, and shall strive to have at least three eligible nominees, and preferably more. The Secretary runs the subsequent election, and closes it the day before the Business meeting.

Whenever during an instant runoff voting there is a tie for the last position, a candidate chosen uniformly at random among the tied candidates is eliminated.

Article IV - Section 5

Before the Annual Board Meeting, the President meets with the rest of the Organizing Committee to discuss any issues that should be brought up at the Annual Board Meeting.

Scheduling the Business Meeting before the Annual Board Meeting allows the Board to discuss the proposals for future Conferences presented at the Business Meeting.

Article V - Section 3

Every offer for a corporate donation needs to be approved by the Board before it can be accepted. If the donation is accepted and the corporation agrees, the corporation will be acknowledged as a sponsor on the conference website for the n conferences after receipt of the donation, where n equals the quotient of the amount of the donation and $5,000, rounded down.

Article VI - Section 3

On average, two out of three to four years the Conference should take place in North America, and one out of three to four years in Europe.

The Conference usually lasts three to three-and-a-half days in May through July.

An abridged version of the CCF code of conduct will be included on the registration form, and participants at the conference will be required to agree to the code at the time of registration.

The registration information is used by the conference organizers to facilitate communication of registration confirmation and conference details, and for planning and running the event. Name, email address, status, and affiliation are shared with the executive committee of CCF. Name and email address are used to determine the electorate for the CCF Board elections and for generating the ballots. Status and affiliation are used for statistics about conference attendance. Individual records are kept for no more than 4 years. Statistical data are kept indefinitely.

Article VI - Section 4

The proceedings of the conference are intended for extended abstracts of the results presented at the conference. Authors should include all the results from their conference submissions, and incorporate the feedback they receive from the Program Committee. There are no page limitations but proceedings articles typically are between 10 and 20 pages. If an article significantly exceeds 20 pages, authors are expected to present the key ideas within the first 20 pages. There is no reviewing after the proceedings version is submitted. Authors are strongly encouraged to subsequently publish full versions in a refereed venue.

Article VI - Section 5

Based on an arrangement with the Journal of the ACM, authors of papers that receive the Best Paper Award are invited to publish an extended version of the paper in that journal.

Article VII - Section 1

The budget typically consists of rent for rooms and the use of audiovisual equipment, catering, meetings of the Organizing Committee and the Annual Board meeting at the Conference, production of the proceedings, processing the registrations, insurance, and banking fees.

The website for the Conference should include the program of the Conference, as well as information about registration, travel, visa requirements, accommodation, and the venue, and a statement against discrimination and harassment similar to the corresponding paragraph in Article VI Section 3 of the CCF Bylaws.

The list of volunteers and their tasks is required to guarantee insurance coverage.

Requests for letters of invitation are typically because of visa requirements.

The Business Meeting and possibly the rump session (if any) may require booking a room outside of normal business hours.

Article VII - Section 3

The LAC chair will remind the LAC members of the code of conduct at the beginning of the conference.

At the end of the discussion at the Business Meeting about the proposals for future Conferences, a straw poll is taken among the attendees. The Board then decides at the Annual Board Meeting or soon after, taking into account the outcome of the straw poll as well as possible other considerations.

Article VIII - Section 2

A reasonable size for the Program Committee is 9 to 11 members (including the chair).

Article VIII - Section 4

The PC chair will remind the PC members of the code of conduct when the deliberations of the committee begin.

An author of a paper submitted to the conference may declare a conflict of interest with one or more individuals by writing to the PC chair. The PC chair will ensure that the individuals with a conflict do not participate in the evaluation of the submission, but will otherwise hold the information in confidence.

Except for papers that are out of scope or obvious rejects, every paper should be assigned to at least three members of the Program Committee.

Even though the names of reviewers of individual papers are not be revealed to the authors, a list of the external reviewers is included in the proceedings of the conference as an official acknowledgement of their service to the community. Requests for external reviews should include a statement to this effect, and preferably offer an option for individual reviewers not to be listed.

Article X - Section 5

PC and LAC members (other than the chairs of these committees) will make the following Conduct Statement to the PC chair or the LAC chair, as appropriate, at the time they agree to serve on the respective committee:

I understand the code of conduct of the Computational Complexity Foundation Inc., especially the provision about conflicts of interest, and shall abide by these provisions.

Conduct Statements can submitted in the form of an email message, provided the authenticity of the message is verified.

Article XIII - Section 2

For the Continuous Board Meeting, the following email list is used: board@computationalcomplexity.org. The standing committees all have their own email list, where the address is their name followed by @computationalcomplexity.org, e.g., executive@computationalcomplexity.org. The officers each have similar email addresses, e.g., president@computationalcomplexity.org.