Overview
This Code of Ethics guides our community toward higher ethical standards in research. It complements our Code of Conduct, which focuses on integrity issues like plagiarism and fraud. All researchers, reviewers, and participants are expected to adhere to these principles.
Research Process Ethics
Human Subjects
- Provide appropriate compensation to all research participants
- Respect minimum hourly rates for crowdsourced work in the relevant region
- Obtain IRB approval or equivalent peer review for studies involving direct human interaction
Data Handling
- Minimize exposure of personally identifiable information without informed consent
- Obtain explicit participant consent when creating datasets with real people's data
- Discontinue use of deprecated datasets unless conducting audits
- Respect defined licenses (Creative Commons, MIT, etc.)
- Assess dataset representativeness and substantiate diversity claims
Societal Impact Concerns
Researchers must transparently address potential harmful consequences of their work:
Safety
Avoid research designed to increase weapon lethality; identify foreseeable harm
Security
Consider deployment vulnerabilities and implement protective measures
Discrimination
Evaluate technology's potential to exclude or negatively impact protected groups
Surveillance
Comply with local laws; prevent prediction of protected categories
Deception
Assess risks of fraudulent or harassing applications
Environment
Consider greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts
Human Rights
Prohibit work facilitating illegal activity or denying fundamental rights
Bias
Inspect datasets and models for encoded discrimination
Mitigation Strategies
- Document datasets and models using structured templates
- Provide clear licenses specifying intended use and limitations
- Employ encryption, anonymization, and privacy protocols
- Use responsible disclosure for security vulnerabilities
- Enable external scrutiny through accessible research artifacts
- Include reproducibility details (code, weights, computational requirements)
- Ensure legal compliance awareness