We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in the FalseWork Papers project a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.
Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment include:
- Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
- Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
- Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
- Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
- Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community
Examples of unacceptable behavior include:
- The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of any kind
- Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
- Public or private harassment
- Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
- Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting
In addition to the general standards above, this project operates under specific scholarly norms appropriate to its nature as an open research programme:
- Critique ideas, not people. "This argument has a gap at step 3" is welcome; "the author is sloppy" is not.
- Credit correctly. If you draw on prior work — published, unpublished, AI-generated, or from within this repository — cite it.
- Disagreement is first-class. The project benefits from validators, correctors, and disputants. Dissent, properly argued, is a contribution.
- Uncertainty is first-class. "I don't know" and "this needs more work" are acceptable answers. The papers themselves are full of such flags. Contributors are encouraged to match that honesty.
- AI-assisted contributions are welcome but must be disclosed. If you used an AI system to draft, check, or extend your contribution, say so. This is a working norm of the project, not a stigma; see Paper 2 for the underlying reasoning.
The project maintainer (Chris Brink, chris@falsework.dev) is responsible for clarifying and enforcing standards of acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any behavior deemed inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.
This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces — GitHub Issues, PRs, Discussions, outreach channels named in docs/outreach/, and direct correspondence with the maintainer — and applies when an individual is officially representing the project in public spaces.
Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported to the maintainer at chris@falsework.dev. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly. The maintainer is obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.
This Code of Conduct is adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 2.1, available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct.html, with a section on scholarly norms added.