DB Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
(Inspired from the ACM's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct - fully borrowed fragments are within quotes)
Database (DB) community members should reflect upon the wider impacts of their work, consistently supporting the public good. Our Code of Ethics is designed to inspire and guide the ethical conduct of all DB community members. It aims to promote a positive, diverse, and inclusive environment within the data management community, creating the grounds to foster professional growth, facilitate networking, and maintain productive professional relationships among our members, regardless of age, gender identity, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, country of origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, education, and work experience. The Code includes statements of responsibility and guidelines to assist the DB community in ethical conduct. “The Code is not an algorithm for solving ethical problems; rather it serves as a basis for ethical decision-making.”
Section 1 outlines fundamental ethical principles that form the basis for the remainder of the Code. Section 2 addresses additional, more specific considerations of professional responsibility. Section 3 guides individuals who have a leadership role, whether in the workplace or in a volunteer professional capacity.
A member should...
Our joint aim should be to minimize negative consequences of computing, including threats to health, safety, personal security, and privacy. “When the interests of multiple groups conflict, the needs of those less advantaged should be given increased attention and priority.” A member “should consider whether the results of their efforts will respect diversity, will be used in socially responsible ways, will meet social needs, and will be broadly accessible.”
We expect all members to treat others respectfully. Even when we hold strong opinions, we should treat others’ views with dignity and courtesy. Understand that disagreements and misunderstandings may occur, but they need to be discussed and resolved in a manner that maintains respectful conduct.
“In this document, "harm" means negative consequences, especially when those consequences are significant and unjust. Examples of harm include unjustified physical or mental injury, unjustified destruction or disclosure of information, and unjustified damage to reputation.”
Empathize with different members’ backgrounds and experiences. Discussion or mention of sensitive issues may trigger negative feelings and distress to others; understand that different life experiences may impact others’ perception of certain topics. When discussing sensitive topics, respect their gravity, and do not make light of the issues with jokes or diminishing comments. Examples of unacceptable behaviors include
Members are advised to respect other cultures, including official religious observances and personal habits to clothing. A member should not impose their own standards upon others and should be aware that habits and behaviors they consider benign may not be viewed as such by others. Displays of affection, such as hugging or touching, may not be acceptable in some cultures. A member should avoid invading others’ personal space.
All members “should be transparent and provide full disclosure of all pertinent system capabilities, limitations, and potential problems in the systems that they build. Making deliberately false or misleading claims, fabricating or falsifying data, offering or accepting bribes, and other dishonest conduct are violations of the Code.” At conference submissions, failure to disclose Conflicts of Interests (CoI), both as authors or part of the organizing body, is also considered a dishonest conduct. Members “should not misrepresent an organization's policies or procedures, and should not speak on behalf of an organization unless authorized to do so.”
Members “should foster fair participation of all people, including those of underrepresented groups. Prejudicial discrimination on the basis of age, color, disability, ethnicity, family status, gender identity, labor union membership, military status, nationality, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, or any other inappropriate factor is an explicit violation of the Code. Harassment, including sexual harassment, bullying, and other abuses of power and authority, is a form of discrimination that, amongst other harms, limits fair access to the virtual and physical spaces where such harassment takes place.” All members should make their materials, such as code, presentation, and research articles, as accessible as possible.
Treat different backgrounds as a source of strength and enrichment. A member must aim to explicitly seek diversity, especially when they have the power to shape representation in highly-visible positions and groups, such as program committees, keynote speakers, panel participants, etc. While English is often the dominant language within the DB community, the community is largely international. A member should respect that English is not the native language of many of the DB community members.
“Developing new ideas, inventions, creative works, and computing artifacts creates value for society, and those who expend this effort should expect to gain value from their work.” Members “should therefore credit the creators of ideas, inventions, work, and artifacts, and respect copyrights, patents, trade secrets, license agreements, and other methods of protecting authors' works.”
Members are encouraged to provide free and open source software and put their work into the public domain. Members “should not claim private ownership of work that they or others have shared as public resources.”
“The responsibility of respecting privacy applies to all members in a particularly profound way. DB systems enable the collection, monitoring, and exchange of personal information quickly, inexpensively, and often without the knowledge of the people affected. Therefore, a member should understand the various definitions and forms of privacy and should make themselves aware of the rights and responsibilities associated with the collection and use of personal information.”
Members “should only use personal information for legitimate ends and without violating the rights of individuals and groups. This requires taking precautions to prevent re-identification of anonymized data or unauthorized data collection, ensuring the accuracy of data, understanding the provenance of the data, and protecting it from unauthorized access and accidental disclosure. Members while conducting research should establish transparent policies and procedures that allow individuals to understand what data is being collected and how it is being used, to give informed consent for automatic data collection, and to review, obtain, correct inaccuracies in, and delete their personal data.”
“Only the minimum amount of personal information necessary should be collected in a system. The retention and disposal periods for that information should be clearly defined, enforced, and communicated to data subjects. Personal information gathered for a specific purpose should not be used for other purposes without the person's consent. Merged data collections can compromise privacy features present in the original collections. Therefore, members should take special care for privacy when merging data collections.”
Members “may often be entrusted with confidential information such as trade secrets, client data, nonpublic business strategies, financial information, research data, pre-publication scholarly articles, and patent applications”. They should protect confidentiality.
Members should...
Members “should respect the right of those involved in projects to transparent communication about the project. Members should be cognizant of any serious negative consequences affecting any stakeholder that may result from poor quality work and should resist inducements to neglect this responsibility.”
“‘Rules’ here include local, regional, national, and international laws and regulations, as well as any policies and procedures of the organizations to which the professional belongs. Members must abide by these rules unless there is a compelling ethical justification to do otherwise. Rules that are judged unethical should be challenged. A rule may be unethical when it has an inadequate moral basis or causes recognizable harm. Members should consider challenging the rule through existing channels before violating the rule. A member who decides to violate a rule because it is unethical, or for any other reason, must consider potential consequences and accept responsibility for that action.”
High quality research work in databases depends on professional review at all stages. Whenever appropriate, members “should seek and utilize peer and stakeholder review”. All members “should also provide constructive, critical reviews of others' work”.
Members “are in a position of trust, and therefore have a special responsibility to provide objective, and credible evaluations of their works. Members should strive to be perceptive, thorough, and objective when evaluating, recommending, and presenting system descriptions and alternatives. Extraordinary care should be taken to identify and mitigate potential risks in the systems. A system for which future risks cannot be reliably predicted requires frequent reassessment of risk as the system evolves in use, or it should not be deployed. Any issues that might result in major risk must be reported to appropriate parties.”
A member is responsible for evaluating potential research projects. This includes evaluating the project's “feasibility and advisability, and making a judgment about whether the work assignment is within the professional's areas of competence. If at any time before or during the work assignment the professional identifies a lack of a necessary expertise, they must disclose this” to the parties concerned (for example, conference program chairs). The concerned parties may decide to pursue the assignment with someone else who has the required expertise. A member's “ethical judgment should be the final guide in deciding whether to work on the assignment”.
“Breaches of computer security cause harm.” Ensuring robust security is encouraged when designing and implementing systems. Members are encouraged to ensure the system functions as intended, and “take appropriate action to secure resources against accidental and intentional misuse, modification, and denial of service”.
Leadership may either be a formal designation or arise informally from influence over others. In this section, "leader" means any member of an organization or group who has influence, educational responsibilities, or managerial responsibilities. A leader may be a research advisor, a manager in a company, or a highly influential member in the database community. While these principles apply to all members, leaders bear a heightened responsibility to uphold and promote them, both within and through their organizations.
A member, especially one acting as a leader, should...
“Leaders should ensure that they enhance, not degrade, the quality of working life. Leaders should consider the personal and professional development, accessibility requirements, physical safety, psychological well-being, and human dignity of all workers. Appropriate human-computer ergonomic standards should be used in the workplace.”
“Leaders should encourage and reward compliance with the Code of Ethics, and whenever possible, take appropriate action when they are violated. Designing or implementing processes that deliberately or negligently violate, or tend to enable the violation of, the Code's principles is ethically unacceptable.”
A member acting as a leader should encourage other members to attend professional training such as workshops or conferences that can help members in their personal or professional development. A leader, whenever possible, is encouraged to mentor other members, especially the underrepresented community, in their professional careers. Leaders, through their experiences, may also initiate outreach or training activities.
“Even the simplest computer systems have the potential to impact all aspects of society when integrated with everyday activities such as commerce, travel, government, healthcare, and education. When organizations and groups develop systems that become an important part of the infrastructure of society, their leaders have an added responsibility to be good stewards of these systems. Part of that stewardship requires establishing policies for fair system access, including for those who may have been excluded. That stewardship also requires that members monitor the level of integration of their systems into the infrastructure of society. As the level of adoption changes, the ethical responsibilities of the organization or group are likely to change as well. Continual monitoring of how society is using a system will allow the organization or group to remain consistent with general ethical obligations. When appropriate standards of care do not exist, members have a duty to ensure they are developed.”
Members “should adhere to the principles of the Code and contribute to improving them”. Members “who recognize breaches of the Code should take actions to resolve the ethical issues they recognize, including, when reasonable, expressing their concern to the person or persons thought to be violating the Code”.
Please refer to DBCares when an unacceptable behavior happens. A target can report to event chairs, the executives of respective conferences, or other event organizers who have been designated to handle such complaints. The conference executives make the final decision on the consequences of unaccepted behaviors and take actions accordingly. They help a target understand the process and possible consequences in a confidential manner. If with full information, a target decides to report, then DBCares will assist in filing an official complaint, and follow up with the conference executives on appropriate actions to execute. This also applies when a witness becomes aware of unacceptable behavior directed at another member of the community. This Code of Ethics mirrors closely the ACM’s Code of Ethics. Should you have any questions, please reach out to the DnI committee.
All the fragments of the code within quotes are borrowed from ACM’s Code of Ethics and ACM’s copyright applies to them. Copyright (c) 2018 by the Association for Computing Machinery.