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Ethical Considerations for Software Engineering Faculty

Explore ethical considerations in software engineering, including plagiarism, authorship, conflict of interest, and fairness. Learn about the rules, penalties, and nuances in academic communities. Guidelines for good research practices with societal impact.

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Ethical Considerations for Software Engineering Faculty

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  1. Ethical Considerations forSoftware Engineering Faculty Leon J. Osterweil (ljo@cs.umass.edu) Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research (LASER) University of Massachusetts Amherst USA

  2. Membership in a CommunityRequires Obeying its Rules • What communities are you joining? • What are the penalties for not obeying its rules? • What are the rules? • Ignorance is no excuse

  3. Caution While the following may seem clear and straightforward, there are a lot of gray areas surrounding all of this

  4. Plagiarism • Putting your name on someone else’s work • This is theft of intellectual property • Intellectual property is all academics have • Plagiarism is grounds for summary dismissal • Situation may not be clear • Rights of individuals in multiple authorship • Better safe than sorry

  5. Authorship • Your name on a paper asserts that you were a substantial contributor • All authors should agree on this • Discuss beforehand • Discuss again at the end • Same applies to order of authorship list • You are responsible for all of it • If it is wrong, you are to blame (even if a coauthor made the errors) • Never put someone’s name on a paper until and unless they agree

  6. Duplicate Submission • Having “the same” paper under review in more than one place at the same time • A serious insult to the community • Software Engineering journals and conferences are particularly sensitive to this

  7. Reviewing • Fairness in evaluation • Protecting the ideas you review • Confidentiality requirements • Be fair, be as nice as you can, be constructive

  8. Letters • Fairness issues • To subject • To addressee • To community at large • Confidentiality Issues

  9. Fairness to students • Don’t stand in the way of a student • Push and support students • Show respect for student ideas • Even if they aren’t great • Be sure your assessments (eg. in letters) are fair • To the student • To the recipient

  10. Conflict of Interest • In reviewing papers, proposals, etc. • Reviewer advantage must not be unfairly exploited • Money, other valuable considerations • Backscratching • Stealing of ideas, results • Giving advantage to your students • Written rules (eg. NSF’s) on when COI exists • Here too there are gray areas • Rules on unfair advantage are much harder

  11. What about Good Research with Potential for Harm? • This can be agonizing • Each of us needs to make a personal decision • At the very least, technical experts need to follow their work into the societal debate • Rather than preempt it • Or dominate it • Or ignore it

  12. Being a good colleague • Support the communities you are in • Committees • Energy • Sharing opinions • Don’t place inappropriate burdens on colleagues

  13. Where will the slides be? http://www.cse.unl.edu/~grother/nsefs/nsefs07.html

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