Welcome to the ACL Ethics Website

Why are you here? What are you looking for? Ethics is a broad and interdisciplinary concern of our field.

Ethics can be defined as "a branch of philosophy that systematizes, defends, and recommends concepts of right and wrong conduct" (Wikipedia). As members of the ACL community, ethics can guide us towards a fairer, more respectful and honest research, which aims at honoring everyone, within and outside of our community, as well as our environment. You will find a more detailed definition in the ACL Code of Ethics, with a special focus on ethics as a NLP researcher.

The people visiting this website have one or several of the questions below in mind that brought them here. Which one is/are yours?

Starting your Research? One aspect of ethical research is not only to adhere to the Ethics Charter linked above, but also to think about our research methodology as outlined in the responsible research checklist. This checklist should be part of every scientific project in the domain of CL/NLP and should be the first point of reference if you come up with an interesting research question – even before you start working on it. Throughout the project, the checklist guides you to keep in mind questions of responsible research. Added benefit: On submission of your paper it is already filled in and you don’t have to think about what you decided several weeks or months ago. See here how this can be put into practice.

How do I review for Ethics? Much of our research can have real-world implications and touch on sensitive ethical issues. As a concerned scholar and reviewer of our community, perhaps you are unsure what constitutes an appropriate use for flagging a paper for further ethics review. Perhaps you also want to learn how to contribute to the process of assessing papers for ethical issues. We’ll show you how to best use the author-provided responsible research checklist as a basis for starting your assessment, and also how to test your own knowledge of ethics through case studies and simulated reviewing.

Ethics reviewing is arguably one of the most important contributions we as a community can do for the long-term health of our field. Right now, we are sorely lacking in enough manpower to do all the reviewing we would ideally want to do. By completing these self-guided exercises, we hope that you will volunteer to the pool of qualified ethical reviewers to help make scalable ethics reviewing a reality. You can find case studies in the Tutorial resources, and a detailed recommendations document in the Resource section.

How do I learn about Ethical Concerns? While checklists are a good means to start thinking about ethics from common perspectives, it is important to view such checklists as an incomplete means to holistically think about the impact of our work. There will be new areas of concern that become necessary to consider as our scholarship continues to advance. We’ll walk you through some case studies to help you think about works from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives and timeframes. You can find such case studies in the Tutorial resources.

Are there good resources to teach Ethics? You are a researcher, lecturer, reader or professor in CL/NLP and want to raise awareness on ethical issues amongst your students – either BSc, MSc or PhD level. Then the Resource section would be right for you.

I am interested in Ethics Research, where should I start? We compiled a list of relevant NLP papers that address a variety of topics: biases, crowdsourcing issues, dual use, environmental impact,... You can find this Reading list, and contribute to it, in the Resource section.