Code of conduct

Code of Conduct EAVP 2023

The Organizing Committee of the 20th Conference of the European Association of Vertebrate Paleontologists (EAVP 2023 hereafter) aims to provide a safe and inclusive environment, with respectful and equitable treatment for everyone. This code is meant to guide delegates, convenors, committees, collaborators, attendees and people with any and all kinds of involvement with the EAVP 2023 Conference.

It is the expectation of the EAVP 2023 that meeting attendees behave in a polite, collegial, correct and respectful manner with each other, with volunteers, presenters and with meeting staff. All personal and electronic interactions should be professional, rational, and mutually respectful in all conference events, both formal and informal. Intellectual property should be respected by not disseminating photographs, recordings, or other reproductions of presentations and/or artwork without explicit permission of the author.

We aim at fostering the principles of prevention, detection, intervention, support reparation, guarantees of non-retaliation, and non-repetition, and we recognize the importance of the intersectional perspective in identifying axis of discrimination and oppression, which include: gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, age, functional diversity, and religion/creed.

We understand as a violation of the Code of Conduct any behaviour, conduct, act, practice, interaction, or action that may take place in any activity under the EAVP 2023 umbrella that affects or causes damage to a person or a group on the basis of the aforementioned categories. Wide-ranging inappropriate conduct includes professional dishonesty, mistreatment, diminishing comments, derogatory jokes, hate speech, privacy violations, defamation, stalking, threatening, blackmailing, labour harassment, sexual harassment, unwanted, undesired or unauthorized touching, assault, rape, and retaliation.

REPORTING PROCEDURES

EAVP is committed to being a safe space, therefore, any individual that experiences any of the aforementioned inappropriate conducts (or any other kind of disrespectful or abusive treatment not identified in this code) can inform and report the incident through the Non-Discrimination Committee of the EAVP 2023 (see below for contact information). Reporting or registry of an incident may be executed by two main procedures: 

The formal reporting will guarantee the principle of confidentiality. All the information will be properly examined while protecting the identity of all parties involved (complainants, offenders/perpetrators, witnesses) until the incident and subsequent investigation are resolved, and those involved are notified. EAVP 2023 is responsible for responding to all formal reporting in a timely manner. All reports will be forwarded to the Non-Discrimination Committee of the EAVP 2023. Formal complaints that extend beyond the meeting itself will be forwarded to the EAVP board and/or the diversity and/or ethics officers of the EAVP.

The Non-Discrimination Committee also offers informal on-site consultation, which comes with an assurance of anonymity (unless or until consent of otherwise is expressly given). Besides the Non-Discrimination Committee, any member of the Organizing Committee may act as consultants/guides/support in informal/formal reporting scenarios and will pass on the information to the Non-Discrimination Committee. The members of both the Organizing Committee and the Non-Discrimination Committees of the EAVP will be easily identifiable by all attendants.

The Non-Discrimination Committee will be in charge of the investigation, fact-finding, fact-checking, resolution (upheld or dismissed report), and action (support, arbitration, and sanction). If an individual from the Committee is involved in the complaint, that individual will be excluded from the procedure.

If the Non-Discrimination Committee upholds an incident-based report, the undertaken action(s) will depend on the scale, scenario, and modality of the Code of Conduct violation. In any case, the Committee will consider the interests and needs of the complainants, guaranteeing their safety and preventing them from suffering any form of retaliation. In addition, the resolution process will always be carried out with transparency, avoiding any form of conflict of interest and bad-faith decisions.

The actions that the Committee can take vary according to the level of the breach/violation itself. EAVP 2023 may bring into force three stages of action:

Reporting – formal or informal – should be received by the Non-Discrimination Committee within a month after the end of the conference (1st August 2023). EAVP 2023 cannot guarantee that reports filed after that deadline will be processed.

MEMBERS OF THE NON-DISCRIMINATION COMMITTEE EAVP 2023: