IRIS-HEP Code Of Conduct

The success of IRIS-HEP depends on its ability to engage a community from collaborating institutions and disciplines with diverse skills, personalities and experiences.

We are outlining here a set of principles and processes to support and promote a healthy community and make IRIS-HEP a welcoming and productive community.

• Foster an open, productive, harassment-free environment for everyone.
• Be welcoming and support people of all backgrounds and identities, immigration status, social and economic class, educational level, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, physical appearance, family status, technological choices, academic discipline, political views, religion, mental ability, and physical ability.
• Be considerate. Your work will be used by other people, and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you take will affect users and colleagues, and you should take those consequences into account when making decisions. Remember that we’re a world-wide community. You may be communicating with someone with a different primary language or cultural background.
• Be respectful. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior or poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.
• Respect the work of others. We recognize the acknowledgment/citation requests of the original authors. As authors, we are explicit about how we want our own work to be cited or acknowledged.
• Be considerate in the words you choose. Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other community members. Harassment and other exclusionary behavior are not acceptable.
• When we disagree, try to understand why. Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time and the IRIS-HEP community is no exception. Try to understand where others are coming from, as seeing a question from their viewpoint may help find a new path forward. And don’t forget that it is human to err: blaming each other doesn’t get us anywhere, while we can learn from mistakes to find better solutions.
• A simple apology can go a long way. It can often de-escalate a situation, and telling someone that you are sorry is an act of empathy that doesn’t automatically imply an admission of guilt.

As a member of our community, you are also a steward of these values. Not all problems need to be resolved via formal processes, and often a quick, friendly but clear word on an online forum or in person can help resolve a misunderstanding and de-escalate things.

However, sometimes these informal processes may be inadequate: they fail to work, there is urgency or risk to someone, nobody is intervening publicly and you don’t feel comfortable speaking in public, etc. For these or other reasons, structured follow-up may be necessary and here we provide the means for that (see Reporting section).

This code of conduct applies equally to all community members in all Institute situations online and offline, including conferences, training events, mailing lists, forums, GitHub organizations, chat rooms, social media, social events associated with conferences and events, and one-to-one interactions.

IRIS-HEP will seek opportunities for education and training on diversity, inclusivity, reporting, and bystander intervention techniques. There is a plan to offer a DEI workshop in the coming months which will be facilitated by Princeton University.

Discussing and/or Reporting Your Concerns

If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct or if you have specific concerns, please report this in a timely manner. Code of conduct violations reduce the value of the community for everyone and we take them seriously.

Please contact any member of the IRIS-HEP Executive Board or email Floe Fusin-Wischusen, Institute Manager, Princeton Institute for Computational Science & Engineering at floe@princeton.edu.

[Parts of this Code of Conduct was adapted from the Project JupyterHub’s Code of Conduct (Some content on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license) and from Princeton Institute for Computational Science & Engineering.]