Short version

Everyone is welcome, make everyone feel welcome, be nice.

Introduction

We are a network of trainers and aim to improve the quality of research together. In order to be able to do this we need to feel comfortable and enable others around us to feel the same way.

This Code of Conduct (CoC) is intended to make the Digital Research Academy an initiative where everyone involved can participate in a friendly and welcoming environment.

The Digital Research Academy is committed to creating welcoming and harassment-free spaces, where the people we interact with (trainers, learners, institutions and beyond) are treated kindly and respectfully.

To make clear what is expected, we ask trainers, employees, collaborators, clients, learners, and anyone who attends DRA events to conform to the following Code of Conduct.

CoC contacts

The following people are CoC contacts and thus available for you if you need any support with (potential) CoC violations or have questions about the CoC:

  • Rabea Müller (rabea.m@live.de)
  • Julia Pauquet (juliapauquet@gmail.com)
  • Esther Plomp (e.plomp8@gmail.com)
  • Joyce Kao (Joyce.Kao@digiresacademy.org)

The CoC contacts together form the CoC committee.

We also offer an Incident Report Form.

Code of Conduct

Expected behaviour

  • Be respectful of different viewpoints and experiences. Do not engage in homophobic, racist, transphobic, ageist, ableist, sexist, or otherwise exclusionary behaviour.
  • Use welcoming and inclusive language. Exclusionary comments or jokes, threats or violent language are not acceptable. Do not address others in an angry, intimidating, or demeaning manner. Be considerate of the ways the words you choose may impact others. Be patient and respectful of the fact that English is a second (or third or fourth!) language for some participants.
  • Do not harass people. Harassment includes unwanted physical contact, sexual attention, or repeated social contact. Know that consent is explicit, conscious and continuous—not implied. If you are unsure whether your behaviour towards another person is welcome, ask them. If someone tells you to stop, do so.
  • Respect the privacy and safety of others. Do not take photographs of others without their permission. Do not share other participants’ personal experiences without their express permission. Note that posting (or threatening to post) personally identifying information of others without their consent (“doxing”) is a form of harassment.
  • Be considerate of others’ participation. Everyone should have an opportunity to be heard. Do not interrupt others on the basis of disagreement (unless it is unacceptable behaviour as described below); hold such comments until they have finished speaking.
  • Don’t be a bystander. If you see something inappropriate happening, speak up. If you don’t feel comfortable intervening but feel someone should, please feel free to ask any CoC contact for support.
  • As an overriding general rule, please be intentional in your actions and humble in your mistakes.

Unacceptable behaviour

Examples of unacceptable behaviour:

  • Written or verbal discriminating comments.
  • Shaming.
  • Causing someone to fear for their safety, such as through stalking or intimidation.
  • Violent threats or language directed against another person.
  • The display of sexual or violent images.
  • Unwelcome sexual attention or physical contact.
  • Sustained disruption of talks, events or communications.
  • Insults or put-downs.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or exclusionary jokes.
  • Excessive swearing.
  • Incitement to violence, suicide, or self-harm.
  • Continuing to initiate interaction (including photography or recording) with someone after being asked to stop.
  • Publication of private communication without consent.

Unacceptable behaviour can lead to you being asked to leave an activity, without refund, or to a ban from any DRA activities.

Reacting to unacceptable behaviour

We appreciate your support in reacting to unacceptable behaviour

If unacceptable behaviour arises, we encourage you to assess the situation and depending on both the situation and considering your personal boundaries and safety use one or more of the options below:

1. Ask someone else to react to a situation

If a situation arises that you feel another person (such as a CoC contact or DRA core team) should address, please reach out to that person to let them know.

2. Make the person aware of their behaviour and ask them to stop

Depending on the situation you may want to do it at a later time / in a more private setting or right away (please use in urgent situations only).

3. Contact a CoC contact person

The CoC contact person will treat your conversation/message with the needed level of privacy and discuss next steps with you and, only if appropriate, the other CoC contacts.

You can contact any of the CoC contact persons directly or fill in our Incident Report Form.

In case of unacceptable behaviour of a CoC contact person, please reach out to another CoC contact person. If you feel that this is not possible either, please reach out to a member of the DRA core team or trainer community.

4. Contact the appropriate emergency responders

In case of physical danger, local emergency services (such as the police and/or an ambulance) may need to be called.

DRA reactions to unacceptable behaviour

The CoC contacts form the CoC committee and may invite the DRA core team to committee discussions, if appropriate.

Upon receiving a report of an incident, the CoC committee will review the incident and determine, to the best of their ability:

  • whether this is an ongoing situation
  • whether there is a threat to anyone’s physical safety
  • what happened
  • whether this event constitutes a Code of Conduct violation
  • who, if anyone, was the bad actor
  • what changes to operations and/or Code of Conduct need to be applied, if necessary

This information will be collected either in person or in writing. The CoC committee will provide a written summary of the information surrounding the incident. All participants will be anonymised in the summary report, referred to as “trainer 1”, “trainer 2”, or “learner 1”. The “de-anonymising key” will be kept in a separate file and only accessed to link repeated reports against the same person over time.

The CoC committee will aim to have a resolution agreed upon within one week. In the event that a resolution can’t be determined within that time, a member of the CoC committee will respond to the reporter(s) with an update and projected timeline for resolution.

Resolution

The CoC committee will seek to agree on a resolution by consensus of all members investigating the report in question. If the committee cannot reach a consensus and deadlocks for over a week, the core team will break the tie. In case of a conflict of interest of any of the committee or core team members, they will be excluded from the resolution discussions.

Possible resolutions may include:

  • A mediated conversation or agreement between the impacted community members.
  • A request for a verbal or written apology.
  • Nothing, if the issue reported is not a violation or outside of the scope of this Code of Conduct.
  • A private in-person conversation between a member of the committee and the individual(s) involved. In this case, the person who has the conversation will provide a written summary for record keeping.
  • A private written reprimand from a member of the committee to the individual(s) involved. In this case, the committee member will deliver that reprimand to the individual(s) over email, cc’ing a CoC contact for record keeping.
  • A public announcement of an incident, ideally in the same venue that the violation occurred (such as on the chat for a violation that occurred in the chat). The committee may choose to document this message for record keeping.
  • An imposed “time out” from online spaces. Committee members will communicate this “time out” to the individual(s) involved.
  • A permanent or temporary ban from some or all DRA spaces or projects. The committee will maintain records of all such bans so that they may be reviewed in the future, extended to a Code of Conduct safety team as it is built, or otherwise maintained. If a member of the community is removed from an event they will not be reimbursed for any part of the event that they miss.

Once a resolution is agreed upon, but before it is enacted, a member of the CoC committee will contact the original reporter and any other affected parties and explain the proposed resolution. The CoC committee member will ask if this resolution is acceptable, and must note feedback for the record. However, the CoC committee is not required to act on this feedback.

Records are kept private by the CoC committee, unless all parties involved agree to make them public.

Additional information

This CoC was developed as part of the DRA trainer meetups and is adapted from the CoC of the Turing Way (who had their own sources, including The Carpentries). We also used snippets of FOSS4G:UK.

The CoC is not a static document, but we are happy to update it when needed and will review it at least every two years for needed changes. Old versions will be archived. Please send feedback to the DRA core team.