The Open Research Community encourages its participants to provide feedback to its materials, content and posts and to enter into lively exchange with their peers on associated academic themes.

In order to ensure that the Open Research Community provides all participants with a pleasant, professional and secure environment for communication that is as unrestricted as possible, its editors have formulated the following community policy rules for communication on the Open Research Community platform. These community policy rules are based on the terms of use for the Open Research Community that are contained in its general Terms and Conditions, while not replacing these terms of use.

Failure to observe the community policy rules will lead to the deletion of the published content and possibly to exclusion of the participant in question from the Open Research Community. The Open Research Community reserves to itself the right to check and moderate all published materials, comments and posts.

The participants of the Open Research Community are expected to

  • treat each other with respect;
  • ensure that their contributions are relevant to the selected community channel, badge or room at the Open Research Community, while conforming to the principles of tolerance, constructive dialogue, and objectivity in their academic themes and positions;
  • demonstrate fairness and trustworthiness by not claiming to be another person in order to mislead other participants or editors of the Open Research Community;
  • ensure that all content they publish on the Open Research Community has previously been checked for viruses, that they do not post any content that enables third parties to gain unauthorized access to the Open Research Community platform and that their use of the Open Research Community does not compromise in any way the physical, software and logical structure of the website or hinder its operation;
  • acknowledge that the Open Research Community accepts no liability for the content of external links. The operators of the interlinked pages or resources bear exclusive responsibility for their content.

The participants of the Open Research Community are not to publish any content, materials or posts either on the platform or through further hyperlinks, that

  • could unsettle, provoke, attack, threaten, offend, injure or insult others;
  • are false, misleading, obscene, of a sexual nature or against any religions or other groups;
  • are of a racist, sexist, homophobic, pornographic, abusive, violence-glorifying, defamatory, discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate nature;
  • are contrary in speech, meaning and means of expression to what is generally understood to be decent and professional;
  • are unlawful and with which the participant can render oneself culpable, especially by contravening applicable copyright, trademark law, competition law, privacy regulations, personality rights or applicable regulations for the protection of minors;
  • advertise the products, offerings or services of other enterprises or entities;
  • make contributions that are of a promotional nature in any manner whatsoever;
  • creates an impression of being formulated by someone other than the actual author;
  • contain contact data such as telephone numbers, postal or e-mail addresses;
  • are written in a language which cannot be expected to be reasonably understood or be translated with relative ease by other platform participants;
  • call for actions that could negatively affect the safety or well-being of others;
  • fall under the category of “spam” messages, especially when this involves multiple, serial messages with similar or identical content;
  • are not relevant to the particular theme under discussion in the particular channel, room or badge of the Open Research Community;
  • contains mal-functioning or broken links, especially such links that lead to error messages;
  • can unnecessarily delay the loading time of the website, which especially applies to uncompressed images, prolonged film files or other large files.

The participants of the Open Research Community are encouraged to

  • complete their profile, since the more detail they add to their profile, the more people will want to engage with them and the more connected they will be to fellow community participants;
  • remember that this is a public forum, while not posting anyone else's personal details or contact information;
  • disclose their personal connection to any content, materials or contributions on the Open Research Community;
  • cite their sources, such as by attributing quotes and paraphrased passages to their proper sources;
  • make sure that they have the right to reproduce or upload a copy of an image, text, video or any other content on this website, since posting copyright-protected material without permission may be unlawful and discussing someone else’s work can be based on its summary in one’s own words;
  • only post links to another website if the content on that other site abides with this policy, and if that other website allows you to post links to their website;
  • remember that this is a public forum, since, once contributions are published online, everyone with Internet access may be able to read them;
  • consider how others could perceive their contributions;
  • make sure that their contributions are not misunderstood by different audiences or individuals;
  • be polite, such as by not using swear words, profane, crude or sexual language;
  • report inappropriate content.

Please help us maintain high standards of participation. If you consider that a contribution does not comply with this community policy, please report it via info@openresearch.community. This facility should be used where content is in breach of our community policy, not simply because you disagree with something said.

We reserve the right, although not the obligation, to take down any contribution that can be considered to be unsuitable, or which is reported as being unsuitable. In such an instance, the person that made the contribution will be notified. If you are aware that contribution has been removed, you must not deliberately resubmit the same contribution.

The Open Research Community is a brand and service of Knowledge Unlatched. You can contact the Open Research Community by email at info@openresearch.community or by post at Knowledge Unlatched, A Wiley brand, Wiley-VCH GmbH – A company of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Rotherstraße 21, D-10245 Berlin, Germany.  

This community is not edited and does not necessarily reflect the views of Knowledge Unlatched. Knowledge Unlatched makes no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content on this community is accurate, complete or up to date, and to the fullest extent permitted by law all liability is excluded.

Date of version

February 9, 2022.