Ethical Guidelines
We take our role in espousing, and remaining accountable to, principles of publishing ethics very seriously. Publishing ethics is the sine qua non of our entire operation. As part of this commitment, we carefully delineate the roles of our authors, our publication partners, our editors, and the public insofar as any allegations of misconduct are made.
While our editors and authors enjoy broad discretion in selecting and approving submitted content for our many publications, we reserve the right to decline to publish or, later in time, remove any articles for violation of these Guidelines.
We recognize that Guidelines are only that. Real-world situations pose significant challenges to our editorial process and require great investment by our team, our partners, and our readers to ensure we are maintaining ethical standards and the highest degree of integrity in our operation. As part of our agreement with all of our publishing partners, these partners inherit our standards of ethics in their process of generating and evaluating the potential article content. Each submittal must be paused until our Guidelines have been applied and the piece is found to be fully compliant.
Our Ethical Boundaries
The touchstone of ethics in publishing is balancing subjective factors and fostering creativity with normative principles of truthfulness, editorial integrity, and good faith. We do not publish submitted content that involves, promotes, or incites hate speech, obscene content including certain erotic sexual content, illicit drugs, plagiarized content, lawlessness, content that incites harmful or dangerous acts such as extreme physical violence, minors participating in dangerous activities, fundraising for cryptocurrency or related projects (eg, Web3), hacking, instructions to harm, or extremist material. This list is not intended to be exhaustive and necessarily changes from time to time.
Our responsibility is to disseminate our ideals, and our policies, and to adequately train our own internal team members and publishing partners. We also continually monitor the publishing environment and adjust our standards accordingly. Our internal compliance team works tirelessly to monitor submitted content and existing article content to ensure our diverse publications meet our Guidelines and that our Guidelines reflect the evolving standards of decency in our society.
How to Report Violations
1. Mark or indicate specifically which article and what language or statement you believe violates our Guidelines. Please provide the name of the publication, the exact location or placement of the article, a page number, and the beginning and end point of the violative content. [Providing a hyperlink to the page in question Is strongly encouraged]
2. Please clearly state what passage or segment of content and how the content violates our Guidelines. For example, if an article reflects plagiarized media, please identify the passage or violative content and identify the original content it purportedly plagiarizes from.
3. Support your complaint with any supporting documentation or information via email to [email protected].
4. Please show as much patience as practicable as we undertake a complete investigation which starts with our intake team and escalates to our compliance department which in turn communicates with our company leadership and relevant publishing partners. In some cases, we must also communicate with external counsel and even with authorities such as the police department.
5. Once our investigation is complete, we will reach out to you at the contact information you have provided with your complaint.
Ethical Guidelines (last updated Feb 22)
