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Researchers

You are visiting this page because you are concerned about the ethical dimensions of your research. The resources below are intended to help you ensure that your work is conducted in an ethically responsible manner.

Responsible Research Checklist

This checklist should be an integral part of every research project involving Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing. It serves as a guide for formulating your research question and documenting ethical considerations throughout your project.

A. For Every Submission

  • Limitations: Discuss known weaknesses of your work.
  • Risks: Note potential ethical, societal, or misuse risks.
  • Claims: Ensure the abstract and introduction clearly summarize your contributions.

B. Scientific Artifacts

  • Citations: Credit all datasets, models, or tools used.
  • Licenses: Specify usage terms and intended use.
  • Privacy: Anonymize data and check for sensitive information.
  • Documentation: Describe coverage, languages, demographics, and dataset statistics.

C. Computational Experiments

  • Model & Compute: Report parameters, infrastructure, and training costs.
  • Setup: Detail hyperparameters and search strategies.
  • Results: Show descriptive statistics and variability.
  • Packages: Note tools and libraries used with versions.

D. Human Subjects / Annotators

  • Instructions: Provide full guidance given to participants.
  • Recruitment & Consent: Explain payment, consent, and ethics approval.
  • Demographics: Report participant characteristics.

E. AI Assistants

  • Disclosure: Note if tools like ChatGPT or Copilot were used and for what purpose.

Tip: Include all supporting information in your paper or supplemental material. “No” answers are allowed if justified.

An additional benefit is that, by the time you submit your paper, the checklist will already be complete, allowing you to document your ethical considerations consistently with earlier project decisions.

Additional Resources

  • Ethics Reviewers: Learn what reviewers focus on during evaluation in the Reviewers Guide.
  • Tutorials & Sessions: Participate in future tutorials or Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions at upcoming CL conferences. You can lead or join these sessions. Explore the Tutorials Page for schedules and materials.
  • GitHub: Access our past tutorial at EACL 2023 with further resources related to ethics in NLP research on our GitHub repository.