At our first in-person meeting, in September 2024, we noted that a “code of ethics” was needed for the mailing list. The wording may have been a little formal, but the need was real. Here it is: ReBiLy now has a code of conduct.
Most codes of conduct for networks or conferences address harassment, discrimination, and intimidating behaviour. That is essential, and ours does it. But a scientific community also has its own specific pitfalls, which are less often named explicitly. We drew on the SFBI’s code of good conduct and tried to go a little further on a few points.
Plagiarism and misappropriation of work. ReBiLy is a space for exchange: people present pipelines under development, methodological approaches not yet published, ideas in rough form. That is precisely what makes the network useful. But it also creates a grey area: an idea shared informally at a meeting is not in the literature, has no DOI, and can therefore be reused without anyone noticing — or by pretending not to. The code of conduct names this problem explicitly, and makes clear that proper attribution of contributions applies to informal exchanges too.
Unauthorised disclosure of unpublished results. Meetings are a space of trust: people present preliminary data, results still being interpreted, sometimes confidential projects. What is shared in that context must not circulate without the explicit consent of those involved.
Professional disparagement and sabotage. These are realities of the academic world, all the harder to bear when many members of our community are on fixed-term contracts, doing a PhD, or in a postdoc. Careers are fragile, and a malicious public criticism can cause lasting damage. Naming it in a code of conduct does not solve the problem, but it makes clear that it is not tolerated here.
Condescending or exclusionary behaviour. ReBiLy brings together very different profiles: biologists who have moved into bioinformatics, computer scientists who have come into the life sciences, permanent staff, fixed-term staff, PhD students, colleagues from the private sector. That diversity is a strength. But it can also generate implicit hierarchies of legitimacy: the “real” bioinformatician versus everyone else. The code of conduct says that this kind of posture has no place here.
The code is available here. It is short, readable, and — I hope — common sense.