Code of Conduct
At ROR, we want all community interactions to be welcoming, collegial, safe, and productive for everyone involved. To that end, this Code of Conduct frames our expectations for interactions between ROR staff, ROR contractors, ROR partners, ROR event speakers, ROR event attendees, ROR volunteers, ROR guests, and ROR community participants in spaces such as the following:
- online and in-person events, including meetings and webinars
- online forums such as the ROR Slack, the ROR Community Forum, and the ROR Technical Forum
- requests for changes to ROR records (curation requests)
- ROR GitHub repositories including code, issues, and comments
- comments and suggestions in online documents
ROR also upholds the values and guidance outlined in the Codes of Conduct of its governing organizations: Crossref, DataCite, and the California Digital Library.
Expectations
We believe that the following communication practices help make ROR community spaces welcoming, collegial, safe, and productive.
- We engage in discussions that focus on the work, not the person.
- We practice active listening.
- We assume good intentions, but we own negative effects.
- We give credit where credit is due.
- We value openness and transparency.
- We support one another’s work and welcome support for our own.
- We strive to express ourselves simply and clearly.
We expect all participants in the ROR community to respect one another regardless of any personal characteristics, including but not limited to:
| age | military/veteran status | professional career level |
| citizenship status | geographic location | race |
| disability | physical appearance | religion/value system |
| ethnicity | political beliefs | nationality |
| family and care responsibilities | pregnancy | parental status |
| gender | sex | sexual orientation |
| socioeconomic background | social class | primary language/speech patterns |
We will not accept harassment or offensive behavior, and we expect that all communications should be appropriate for an international professional audience with people from many different backgrounds. Unacceptable behaviors include:
- offensive comments related to any of the above-named personal characteristics
- sexual language, images, or video
- intimidation, threats of violence, or jokes about harming others
- deliberate misgendering
- stalking
- non-consensual recording or picture-taking
- sustained disruption of events
- inappropriate physical or online contact
- unwelcome sexual attention
How to report a violation
If someone makes you or anyone else feel unsafe or uncomfortable or otherwise violates this Code of Conduct, we ask you to please bring this to the attention of ROR staff or email the report to community@ror.org or info@ror.org. Reports will be seen by Maria Gould and Amanda French and will be treated privately.
You may also report violations to any of ROR’s three governing organizations following the procedures outlined in the Crossref Code of Conduct, the DataCite Code of Conduct, or the UC3 at CDL Code of Conduct.
Steps ROR will take:
- Participants will be asked to stop any disrespectful, offensive, or harassing behavior and are expected to comply immediately.
- Anyone violating this Code of Conduct will be removed without warning from the space where the incident occurred.
- Those who have violated this Code of Conduct may also be blocked or banned from all interaction on all platforms managed by ROR and its governing organizations for any period of time at our discretion.
- ROR and/or its governing organizations might publish a statement about the incident, but never without the permission of those who have been harmed by the incident, and always within the law.
- Requests to be reinstated after being blocked or banned may be sent to community@ror.org and will be considered.
Acknowledgements and license
This Code of Conduct has been influenced by several others, including the Crossref Code of Conduct, the DataCite Code of Conduct, the UC3 Code of Conduct, the Open Repositories Code of Conduct, the Code4Lib Code of Conduct, the Samvera Code of Conduct and Anti-Harassment Policy, and the CSCCE Community Participation Guidelines. The ROR Code of Conduct is dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons CC0 waiver 1.0.
This is a living document and is subject to change. This version was last reviewed on May 2, 2024. If you would like to request changes to this document, please email community@ror.org or get in touch with ROR staff by other means.