Public Statement#

Overview#

In some cases, PC chairs decide to accept and publish a paper despite ethical concerns raised during the review process. This creates a dilemma: on the one hand, publishing such a paper may appear to reward ethically questionable research; on the other hand, rejecting it does not necessarily prevent it being published at another conference, as the authors may submit it elsewhere, potentially to a venue with less rigorous ethical scrutiny or after modifying the presentation to obscure controversial aspects.

As a compromise, PC chairs may choose to publish the paper with a public statement. This statement is typically included on the first page of the paper or as an accompanying document. It outlines the ethical concerns identified during review, discusses their implications, and explains the reasoning behind the decision to proceed with publication.

The rationale behind this approach is that publishing the work alongside a transparent and critical assessment is preferable to having it appear elsewhere without any contextualization. A public statement can help inform readers and the community, encourage critical engagement, and signal that the work was not uncontroversial within the community.

However, such a statement should not be interpreted as encouraging the methodology or setting a precedent for future acceptance. Rather, it serves as a warning and highlights that the approach may be considered problematic in the future.

Open Questions#

The use of public statements remains a topic of ongoing debate within the S&P research community. Critics argue that publication, regardless of a public statement, still provides a signal that such work is acceptable to do as long as the research is interesting enough. Supporters, in contrast, view statements as a way to prevent uncommented publication somewhere else, increase transparency and foster discussion about ethical boundaries.

As a result, there is no clear consensus on whether this practice is desirable. It is still open for discussion.

Examples#

• Solomos et al. Tales of Favicons and Caches: Persistent Tracking in Modern Browsers. NDSS. 2021.
• Kircher et al. Dancer in the Dark: Synthesizing and Evaluating Polyglots for Blind Cross-Site Scripting. USENIX Security. 2024.
• Burnett et al. Encore: Lightweight Measurement of Web Censorship with Cross-Origin Requests. SIGCOMM. 2015.

References#

• Ramulu et al. Ethics in Computer Security Research: A Data-Driven Assessment of the Past, the Present, and the Possible Future. CCS. 2025.
• Authors. Reflection, Education, Consistency: Towards Best Ethics Practices At Security And Privacy Conferences. CCS. 2026.