Make "conflict of interest check" independent from inviting a reviewer

[robbertkrebbers]

When inviting an external reviewer, HotCRP performs a check for conflicts of interest. This check happens after filling the form and pressing the "Request review" button.

In practice, one often wants to email a reviewer before sending an official invitation, or a chair wants to clear a list of suggested reviewers so the (lead) reviewer(s) can decide who to invite. So it would be useful if HotCRP allows the chairs to perform this check independently of inviting the reviewer.

PS: Now of course you could say, you could also do that check yourself (check the reviewer's website, DBLP, etc); but (a) that costs a lot of time, and (b) that way you easily miss some "hidden" conflicts that HotCRP is aware of (e.g., new collaborations that have not resulted in a published paper).

[kohler]

I like this idea, but FWIW you can already get the same effect by using bulk assignments. If you go to Assign > Bulk update, and enter something like

paper,action,user
100,externalreview,user@foo.com

HotCRP always does a dry-run of the assignment before performing it, so you can see if there's a potential conflict.

Using the assign API with dry_run=1 (e.g., via the hotcrapi command-line tool) will have the same effect.

[robbertkrebbers]

Thanks @kohler, that is a useful workaround for the time there is no UI yet.

PS: Is there a typo in your message, and is it supposed to be externalreview? Because that is what the documentation appears to say.