code of conduct

Overview

We value the participation of every member of our community and want to ensure everyone has an enjoyable and fulfilling experience, both professionally and personally. Accordingly, all members of the Sedimentary Basins Research Group (SBRG) are expected to show respect and courtesy to others at all times.

Please note that this code of conduct is not a legal document. It supplements Department- and/or College-level policies for your level of employment or study.

Enjoyable, high-quality research can only be conducted when you feel safe, secure, and supported. All group members are thus dedicated to a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, and/or religion. We do not tolerate harassment by and/or of members of our group in any form, and we ask all members of the community to conform to the following Code of Conduct.

  • All communication, be it online or in person, should be appropriate for a professional audience and be considerate of people from different cultural backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery are not appropriate at any time.

  • Be kind to others and do not insult or put down other group members.

  • Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are inappropriate.

  • Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of discussions, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.

  • Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

  • Contribute to discussions in meetings with a constructive, positive approach.

  • Be mindful of talking over others when discussing in groups and be willing to hear out the ideas of others.

Davide will discuss the Code of Conduct with lab members who violate these rules, regardless of their contributions to the SBRG or the specialized nature of their skill set. If inappropriate behavior persists after this initial discussion, formal processes, in line with the university’s work practice policies, will commence. To report an issue, please contact Davide; all communications will be treated as confidential and according to the university policy. If you feel uncomfortable contacting Davide directly, please contact whom you think is more appropriate according to the case.

Mental Health

There is increasing evidence that certain attributes of academic research, including graduate studies, may challenge your mental health. Specific factors driving this include:

  • Lower pay and quality-of-life issues

  • Feelings of isolation in your research, e.g., everyone has their topic, and it can often feel as if you are working on your own

  • Uncertainty in your research, although it should be noted that, in research of all kinds, it is not just the outcomes that are uncertain, but the questions themselves!

  • Uncertainty in your future career

  • So-called “negative results”; i.e., at some point in your research, it is likely that certain questions will be more challenging to answer than anticipated or that you will feel you have spent days/months/years toiling with little to show

  • Burnout, i.e., feeling the need to work endless hours to make up for the above issues, and the subsequent exhaustion

All graduate students encounter most of these issues to some extent. I strongly encourage everyone in the group to take an active and preemptive approach toward maintaining their mental health. I assure you that you have the time and resources needed for a highly successful Master's or Ph.D. If there is anything that is placing undue stress or preventing you from performing at your best potential, please do not hesitate to let me or any of the postgraduate coordinators in the department know how we can help. You should also be familiar with counselling resources on campus. Every effort will be made to help you access the right support networks.

Outputs, publication expectations and standards, and open science

Publication of papers and conference abstract submission must be discussed with Davide before any action is taken.
Where possible, all research outputs (e.g., papers) will be published ‘Open Access’ (OA) (preferably Gold or Diamond OA; for definitions, please see the Open Research Glossary). If not possible, pre-publication manuscripts should be uploaded to a relevant pre-print server (e.g., EarthArXiv) before journal submission, review, and (hopefully) publication. Where Gold or Diamond OA is not possible, the manuscript should be made publicly available via Green OA. We are committed to the principles of DORA. This implies that we are committed to (i) eliminating the use of journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, in funding, appointment, and promotion considerations; and (ii) assessing research on its own merits rather than based on the journal in which the research is published. I encourage you to think broadly about your choice of publication venue. It is my personal view that the key guiding principle for choosing a journal is that it is thematically appropriate for the work you wish to publish.

Authorship on any manuscript or presentation will be openly discussed and should include everyone who has contributed significantly to the work. A “significant contribution” can include, but is not limited to, the interpretations of primary data and development of ideas presented in the work, but it does not need to include data curation or financial contribution to the work undertaken. The order of authors on a manuscript or presentation should be dictated by the relative contribution made by each author; if these contributions are equal, authors should be listed alphabetically by last name. Where conflict arises, I will facilitate discussion to help resolve this. I encourage an open dialogue about this matter, ideally via authorship ‘check-ins’ that will likely occur several times over the lifetime of the study. To help inform Editors, reviewers, and readers of our papers, we will include an author contribution statement as part of a paper.

Papers must be shared and receive formal approval from all co-authors (both inside and outside of our university) before submission; this is consistent with guidance provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which states that all authors must approve the submission of works bearing their names. Please give co-authors at least two weeks to comment on paper drafts; at busy times of the year, they may need longer. I also suggest that the initial paper draft receives informal reviews from one or two of your fellows; this will help improve the product, as well as provide a training opportunity. Upon acceptance, review, or rejection of your paper, you must inform all coauthors of the outcome as soon as possible. If accepted, ensure that all co-authors can look at and comment on page proofs (N.B., many errors can be introduced into manuscripts by the journal at this stage). Note that after paper acceptance, final text and graphics files must be sent, in raw format (e.g., docx, ai), to all co-authors for their records/use within 14 days, with an accepted version of the manuscript.

Note that SBRG members may be using confidential, company-provided datasets; our confidentiality agreement (NDA) clearly states that we must obtain permission from the owner to publish their data and that they must have a variable amount of time to provide approval. Explicit permission must be sought for every paper, i.e., images approved for one paper may not be approved for a different paper. If you require any guidance regarding paper drafting and submission, please speak to Davide. Confidential and proprietary data should not be copied on unauthorized drives (refer to Davide for guidance) and taken outside the office without authorization by Davide. Upon project completion, a curated version of all datasets used should be provided to Davide on a hard drive. Sharing (or showing) any part of confidential data with people not included in the NDA is a breach of the contract between the university and the data owner, and the person responsible may be legally accountable for any damage. Anyone working with proprietary data must obtain authorization from Davide before involving external people.

Conferences

Budget and approval

You will be supported (financially and otherwise) to attend and take part in conferences related to your Ph.D./MSc research. You must notify me of any needs at least 2-3 months before the conference, as any expenses must be approved beforehand. To reduce the load on your finances, I will cover your expenses (e.g., flights, conference fee, etc.) in advance, if possible, and charge the hotel room to my credit card. Consider that the university and the State have strict regulations in matters of travel; always ask before doing anything, or you risk being financially liable for unauthorized expenses. In any case, you are expected to register for the conference as a student and in advance to get early bird registration fees. You will fly economy class and book an accommodation within a reasonable budget.

Expectations and requirements

Conference abstracts must be shown to all co-authors before submission. Upon acceptance (or rejection) of your abstract, you must inform all coauthors of the outcome as soon as possible. You must also send a final draft of your presentation or poster to all co-authors at least one week before the presentation date. Ideally, a near-final draft should be completed two weeks before the presentation date to be presented at an SBRG weekly meeting. In this way, you will be able to receive feedback from your colleagues. Presentation and publishing ethics, which are at least partly captured by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), state that all authors must approve the submission and presentation of work bearing their names. Note that after material has been presented at a conference, this must be sent in raw format (e.g., .ppt, .ai) to all co-authors and data providers for their records/use within 14 days; if appropriate, this material can be uploaded to an online archive (e.g., FigShare, EarthArXiv) where it will be assigned a DOI, and will be useable and citable by the scientific community.

Working hours & holidays

I recognize that many of you have personal responsibilities and obligations besides your studies. I appreciate that it can be challenging to balance those demands and that a classic ‘9-to-5’ day may not be optimal. Because of this, the exact hours you choose to work are up to you. Being on campus between 10 am and 4 pm most days may, however, help facilitate collaborative working and, hopefully, lead to a more fulfilling research experience. Where possible, meetings and events will not be arranged outside these hours to allow participation by all group members.

Graduate students and Postdoctoral scholars working in the lab will be supported for 12 months/year, whenever possible. As such, they are expected to take approximately 20 days (4 weeks) of paid time off per year, beyond official University-wide holidays. I strongly encourage you to take this time to relax, visit family and friends, and generally unwind from the rigors of study and research. It is important to take time off, respect weekends (or time in lieu), and establish a sustainable work-life balance. It is also essential to respect the time and efforts of others and to note that effective working will improve the quality of your research. If you struggle with establishing a sustainable work-life balance, please discuss this with me at an early stage.

Although permission for time off is very rarely required, you must inform Davide in advance when you plan to be away for a week or more, or if you will not be present at the weekly meetings. Please respect key deadlines within the calendar year, also considering that we work in a team. In situations with key time pressures or deadlines, it is crucial to prioritize work, and you may be asked not to take time off. Students not employed on a 12-month basis are expected to take time off only during official holidays.

Meetings

Group meetings: Group meetings are typically held once a week; all group members are expected to attend if they are not otherwise engaged in other research-related activities (e.g., at a conference, attending training or a lecture, etc.). These meetings are an excellent forum for updating colleagues on project progress, developing research skills, and widening our collective knowledge. Meetings provide a forum for presenting results, such as ‘dry runs’ of conference talks and more informal discussions around research topics arising. As part of your professional training, you will be expected to lead a group discussion on a topic of your choice at least once per term.

Individual meetings: These will occur on an ad hoc basis as personal situations require. Individual meetings will allow you to discuss with me your progress and any administrative issues that need to be addressed. I encourage you to come fully prepared for individual meetings; in this way, we can focus discussions so that all topics are addressed. Such discussions are an important way to self-monitor your progress, as well as keep your supervisor(s) informed of both positive and negative developments. They are particularly important for those who have co-supervisors based at other institutions.

Communications

Where possible, avoid sending work-related emails outside of 8 am to 6 pm. Outlook provides functionality for saving an email as a draft, so it can be sent within the hours stated above. Please consider the timing of the email with respect to what the recipient needs to do; for example, try not to send an email at 5:59 for something required for a 10 am meeting the next day. No lab members are required, nor should they feel obliged to reply to emails outside their typical work hours. However, prompt replies to emails within these times are helpful. If you experience any challenges related to flexible working within the SBRG, please do not hesitate to contact me. All communication will be treated as confidential.

Social media

In your work-related life, you may wish to engage with social media. Please be considerate of others when using these platforms and respectful of how others may want to use them. For instance, Davide uses Instagram in a personal and professional nature, and his account has a diversified audience (including prospective students, funders, and other academics); you must therefore bear in mind the very public nature of interactions on social media, and that many people (who may not be on a specific platform) will read and hear of online correspondence. We are not compelled to engage with any social media or use any such media for work-related purposes, and we will never pressure each other to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ each other.