I recently submitted a paper to a conference and received four positive reviews and one negative review. The negative reviewer did not want any discussion on the paper, so we contacted the program chair to appoint another reviewer. We recommended a specific member of the program committee (hereafter referred to as X), clearly stating we had no conflict of interest. We posted an extended version of our paper on Arxiv.
Today, I discovered that X had posted a paper in Arxiv, claiming acceptance at another conference. The paper presented the same non-trivial main idea as ours, already available on arXiv. The author cited our Arxiv paper tangentially without properly acknowledging our main contribution.
Given this situation:
- How should I address this potential plagiarism issue?
- Whom should I contact—the program chair, conference organizers, proceedings publisher, or research integrity office?
- What evidence should I gather to support my claim?
- When should I consider seeking legal advice?
I would greatly appreciate guidance on handling this situation professionally to uphold academic integrity. I am committed to taking the necessary steps to address this issue.
