This Community Ethics Document 1.0 was collectively created by participants of the Global Community Bio Summit 3.0, which took place in Cambridge, MA October 11-13, 2019. These ethical principles are intended to be used as guidelines for anyone, anywhere engaged in Community Bio work. It is intended to be a living document that can be revised, built upon, and edited.

These 12 principles were agreed to by consensus by participants and could be applied in any Community Bio context. It’s up to you! The questions following each principle are meant to inspire conversations on a local level about how to put these principles into practice for individuals, groups, and labs across the global Community Bio ecosystem.

Respect

How can we prioritize the rights of humans, animals, and ecosystems?

How can we best consider the potential impacts of our work, intended and not?

How can we support our community members in putting values into practice?

How can we be attuned to the ways in which our practices instrumentalize other living beings? 

Credit

How do we reach a shared definition of the terms and forms of attribution, and implement a system in which we acknowledge contributions appropriately?

How can we make sure our work is serving as a resource for the community, and the broader public, while continuing to value the labor of those who do the work?

Community 

How do we make decisions collectively?

How do we identify and engage non-bio stakeholders?

Autonomy

How do we decide what forms of self-determination do we value, as individuals and communities? 

Do we value both individual and group self-determination?

How do we identify the relationships of power that impact autonomy? 

What do we need in order to promote autonomy in accordance with our values?

Education 

How can we create space to learn and encourage the confidence to teach?

How can we enthusiastically educate others, within this community and outside of it, about our values and how we put them into action in different contexts?

How can we empower our community to engage with the public in a clear, meaningful, and responsible way?

Open Science

How can we encourage replicability and collaboratively share our results? 

How do we support openness while also being mindful of the risks that openness poses? 

Transparency 

How do we stay honest and open about our failures?

How can we acknowledge ethical conflicts?

How do we decide what acceptable funding sources are?

Data Privacy 

How can we respect the sovereignty of data, treat stakeholders as peers, and agree on terms of use through informed consent?

Safety 

How do we embrace safe practices within unconventional contexts? 

How can we protect each other and create resources for communities to experiment safely?

Justice and Fairness 

How do we center justice in our practice?

How can we avoid perpetuating and creating systems of winners and losers?

How do we account for disparate impact of our work?

Diversity and Inclusion 

How do we make sure our organizations and their leadership respect vulnerabilities, acknowledge privilege, and confront ableism?

How do we make our spaces valuable and accessible to communities whose interests are historically underrepresented in the sciences?

How do we empower our communities by providing an ecosystem of supportive pipelines that help individuals adopt the agency to strive to leadership roles?

Accountability

Is there an active commitment to consider these questions?

How will we be accountable to these ethics?

How will we hold each other accountable?

How do we make ourselves accountable to people outside this community?