Code of Conduct
The community of participants at astronomical meetings and in astronomical research is made up of members from around the globe with a diverse set of skills, ages, personalities, and experiences. It is through these differences that our community experiences success and continued growth. We expect everyone attending O-MESS to follow the guidelines outlined below when interacting with others, both during or outside O-MESS. Our goal is to maintain a positive, inclusive, successful, and growing scientific community.
All attendees are expected to treat all people with respect and to provide a harassment and bullying-free environment, regardless of sex, sexual orientation and/or gender identity, disability, age, physical appearance, body size, race, nationality, ethnicity, and religion. In particular, sexual language and imagery, sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes will not be tolerated.
Note that people outside our community should be treated with the same respect as those within our community.
All discussions between members of the community should be done with respect for the duration of the meeting and in all activities related to it. Ideas and results must be respectfully discussed based solely on their scientific merits. Personal attacks will not be tolerated. The organizers pledge to take proactive measures to ensure that all participants are heard and feel confident that they can freely express their opinions.
Explicit consent from the speaker must be sought before publishing of presentation recordings or video clips on any kind of media or platform (scientific publications, on social media, or on conference websites). Posting (a few) slides (or parts thereof) on social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc) helps promote scientific discussion and is permitted unless the speaker indicates at the beginning of their talk that they are not comfortable with that.
Attendees who witness or are affected by possible violations of the code of conduct should contact the O-MESS organizers at evolved.stars(at)gmail.com to initiate a complaint, attaching evidence (e.g., screenshots) if available. The complaint will be examined and action will be taken if it is confirmed that code has been violated. First infraction will result in a warning, further infractions will lead to being banned from attending O-MESS.
The organizers of O-MESS will do their best to assure that the entire community follows the code of conduct and seek to act accordingly when violations are noted. The organizers thus reserve the right to enforce this code of conduct and will take necessary action to keep O-MESS a welcoming environment for all participants.
This statement has been adapted from the EuroWD 2018 code of conduct, with elements taken from the ESA 2020 code of conduct.
The O-MESS organizing committee
Marcelo Miller Bertolami, Ingrid Pelisoli, Roberto Raddi, Nicole Reindl