GECO Code

The code of conduct for the group of Geocomputation and Earth Observation.

‘I’, ‘me’, or ‘myself’ refers to Beni Stocker. ‘We’ is the group for Geocomputation and Earth Observation, GIUB, UniBe.

Our mission

• We develop process understanding and predictive methods of climate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles.

• More on our scientific mission here:

  Mission

Our principles

• We aim for having a lasting impact on our scientific field and society. With our work, we build on and create community. We want to be held in high regard for our scientific expertise, our collaborative spirit, and our integrity by our colleagues and peers.
• Our science is open.
• We endorse the Better Science Initiative, as outlined on our website (link).

Communications

• Be kind.
• Give credit. If a colleague has provided meaningful contributions to your work, you should acknowledge their contribution (and consider inviting them as co-author for your publication, see below).
• Give compliments whenever you can.
• Express yourself such that the receiver of your communication can respond, consider your input, or address your critique. Be precise, concise, and constructive.
• Do not use sarcastic or passive-aggressive language in any communication.

Group culture

Work-life balance

• An appropriate work-life balance is the basis for good mental health, creativity, and productivity. Take days off regularly. Cultivate your hobbies. Take care of yourself and people close to you.
• I and we will respect your availability hours and personal life especially if you have kids or other caretaking duties. We will only schedule meetings when you are available.
• Flexibility in organizing your working day is an important asset of our work in academia and as long as people do their work, I will not be checking their exact schedule. This is part of the trustworthiness between advisor and advisee.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

• Diversity in views, experience, culture, and identity is what we seek. It enriches our work and our lives.
• Any forms of discrimination, harassment, or prejudice are not tolerated.
• We all come from different backgrounds and cultures. There could be behaviours from one culture that might be offending or not aligned with another culture. If this is the case, we should feel open and be able to discuss those issues.

Personal issues and conflicts

• Whenever possible and appropriate, contact me (Beni) with any concerns. We try to address conflicts through personal conversations, and if necessary with the help of thesis co-advisors.
• If you have any mental health issues you should feel free to reach out to me or other lab members.
• Several advisory services are offered through UniBe (see here) and may be contacted also without notifying me (Beni).
• Support for your mental wellbeing, career planning, etc. is also provided by the University's councelling centre (see here).

Supervision, mentoring, and responsibilities

• I usually do at least bi-weekly one-on-one meetings, in person, in Bern, with each group member. This is your hour. Use it, but if you consider it more effective to skip individual meetings, please feel free to propose it. While I am in my Bern office, you may always approach me or knock on my door if you like to discuss anything.
• You can expect my mentorship. Being part of our group shall be a career stage that opens new doors and prepares you well for your next step. Your success, also after your time in our group, is our group's success and it creates a long-term network of successful scientists. Therefore, feel free to get inputs on fellowship and job applications, organise mock presentations, and ask for recommendations.
• Planned work, timelines, feedback on performance, and career-related points are discussed in appraisal talks (“Mitarbeitergespräche”, MAG) between each employee and myself, guided by official forms, and signed by both parties. The first appraisal talk is held within 6 months of employment and is repeated annually, usually in November. They provide a basis for HR-related matters, including salary, and serve as a legally-binding document. Appraisal talks are held with every UniBe-employee.
• Co-supervision arrangements for PhDs and Postdocs are rather the rule than an exception. Clarify roles and expectations of co-supervision arrangements at the start of your employment or thesis. Arrangements are diverse, but a few rules apply to all:
  • Always keep all co-supervisors in the loop about decisions on projects (what to work on, research question, approach, data) and publications (see also here).
  • Senior author roles for each project should be defined as early as possible.
  • Attend group meetings of each supervising group leader’s group. If you prefer to change this, discuss it with your supervisors.
  • In principle, lab rules of each supervising group leader apply. In case of conflicting points, clarify them with your supervisors.

Staff

• Staff (people with contracts issued by Uni Bern with Beni as Supervisor or Principle Investigator or Group Leader or whatever) contribute to teaching, supporting courses organised through Uni Bern and led by Beni.

Postdoc

• A postdoc agreement serves as the basis for defining the research and supervision arrangement of the postdoc. See:

  Postdoc agreement

• Postdocs on project funding (not fellowships) contribute to teaching, supporting courses organised through Uni Bern and led by Beni.

PhD

• PhD students have the option to be registered in Geography or in Climate Sciences through the Oeschger Center for Climate Research. Respective regulations of the doctoral program apply.
• Chapter contents are planned in agreement with all PhD committee members and have to bee agreed with by the main supervisor. Changes may be made throughout the PhD, but have to be discussed and agreed by the committee members.
• PhD theses are published as cumulative journal articles. No strict requirements apply regarding the number or state of journal articles. A good standard in our field and for our typical type of research (and generally expected) is to have one published article and at least two articles submitted for peer-review.
• PhD students attend at least one, normally two or more major conferences in Europe over the course of their PhD. This is flexible and if interesting new results are to be shown, it should not be a hard limit.
• PhD students on project funding (not fellowships) use 5-10% of their time for teaching, supporting courses organised through Uni Bern and led by Beni.
• PhD studies rules apply.

Master

MSc info

Bachelor

BSc info

Group meetings

• You are expected to attend our bi-weekly group meetings in person in Bern. They are scheduled in the group calendar (google calendar).
• In group meetings, everyone recaps on progress and noteworthy results since the last group meeting and sets SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) for the upcoming two weeks.
• Extraordinary group meetings are scheduled in advance of major conferences (e.g., EGU) for a “Hauptprobe” (final rehearsal) of presentations.

Scientific integrity

• The Swiss National Science foundation lists several resources describing key points of scientific integrity which we fully endorse in our group (web page, Swiss Code of Conduct for Scientific Integrity of 2021 (PDF)).
• Our science must be robust, reproducible, and have a lasting impact. This is enabled by analyses being documented, code being managed on git, and workflows made reproducible - from original (if possible public) data sources to final published figures.

Code and data management

• In general, our code and data are open access, visible, and accessible to all through our github organisation landing page here.
• Manage each of your project with git from the start. You can use our project template to initialise a new git project. A Python-specific project template is here. You may follow Chapter 1 in AGDS Book to learn how to create reproducible workflows with git using RStudio and RMarkdown (R notebooks).
• Manage data that you use as input for your analysis as described here. This concerns data deposition, backup/”re-creatability”, and documentation.
• Manage data and model outputs that are produced by your analysis and modelling as described here.
• Before submission, prepare the analysis/modelling git repository such that reviewers can reproduce your results. Get feedback from a group colleague about reproducibility and legibility. Code review and transfer of the git repository to geco-bern must be carried out before publication.

Publishing

Collaborating, roles, and co-authorships

• Coordinate and communicate the involvement of co-authors in publications where you have the lead (first author). Decisions about the author list are to be made in accordance with the senior author and should be taken early in the project.
• Roles and responsibilities of project collaborators (and co-authors on papers) should be clear. The fewer people on the project, the clearer they become (in general). We want to avoid situations where all are always on board all projects but nobody feels responsible except for the first author (project leader).
• Including additional collaborators (co-authors) on a project should be justified based on typical author contribution criteria. This means, contributions should be based on active involvement in the project for supporting or conducting analyses, applying methods and models, and active support of the use of particular, critical datasets.
• Contributions by colleagues should be enabled whenever possible and appropriate. Giving the opportunity to colleagues to make an active contribution should be actively sought after by the project leader (main author). Our group meetings are an opportunity to become aware of potentially beneficial collaborations with other group members.
• Contributions justifying involvement in the project should be highlighted to the senior author (Beni, in most cases) by the project leader in cases where they are not initially planned and where the senior author may not be aware.
• Final decisions on project involvement and co-authorships are with the senior author (Beni, in most cases).
• Including additional collaborators (co-authors) on a project should be justified based on CRediT roles (see below).
• Authorship guidelines developed by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences are available here.

Manuscript preparation, submission, and deposition

• Use either Google Docs or Overleaf. It is recommended to manage citations using Zotero and the shared libraries of the Zotero group (see here).
• Involve co-authors in manuscript writing. Involve direct supervisors early - at the stage of manuscript design (contents as bullet points, display items). Once an initial draft with formulated text is available, share it with all co-authors and give them a clear indication about the time until when you expect their feedback. Be kind and respectful of their agendas and lives: allow at least 2 weeks for inputs on manuscripts (1 week for conference contributions).
• Consider all feedback from all co-authors of your manuscript. If you chose not to follow suggestions, explain why by answering them directly, make your decision transparent to all co-authors and allow for inputs from all co-authors on the decision.
• Update all co-authors on all stages of the manuscript submission and review process.
• Inform all co-authors of conference contributions at least 1 week before abstract submission.
• The submission of a manuscript to a journal or an abstract to a conference must be approved by the senior author.
• All publications with a University of Bern affiliation must be published in the Bern Open Repository and Information System (BORIS). In case of questions, please contact Kerstin Schneider (UniBe library) or Thomas Reist. Do this as soon as possible after publication and no later than March 31 for all publications of the respective preceding year.
• Prepare additional material to accompany your publications. This may be in the form of a blog on our website, a landing page containing links to additional materials (published code, data, display materials, etc.)

Affiliations and acknowledgements

• In all publications of journal articles, conference abstracts, etc., list relevant affiliations and funding sources. Relevant affiliations are institutions that issued your contract, hosted you, or supported your research in any way. All affiliations that were relevant during the full course of the project must be listed.

• Work that was initiated as part of your work in the GECO group and work for which you used working time that counts towards your employment in our group must list our group as affiliation, as detailed here:

  Affiliations and acknowledgements

Credit

• Author contributions should be described in publications following the CRediT standard (link). (Click triangle to unfold/fold)
  • Conceptualization
  • Data curation (Beni: This warrants authorship when substantial additional efforts in data curation are done to support the respective publication.)
  • Formal Analysis
  • Funding acquisition (Beni: We don’t consider this a sufficient criterium. However, the PI that provides the funding for the researcher must be given the opportunity to contribute actively as a co-author in publications that emerge from the work relation funded by the PI.)
  • Investigation
  • Methodology
  • Project administration
  • Resources (Beni: Similar to funding acquisition: We don’t consider this a sufficient criterium. However, the person that provides the resources to the researcher must be given the opportunity to contribute actively as a co-author in publications that emerge from the use of these resources.)
  • Software (Beni: Similar to data curation: This warrants authorship when substantial additional efforts in software development are done to support the respective publication.)
  • Supervision
  • Validation
  • Visualization
  • Writing – original draft
  • Writing – review & editing

Channels and media

Ask Beni to be added.

• Email for important communications that you may want to be able to refer to or look up in the future. Check your UniBe email at least once a day during work days.
• Google calendars: GECO for all events and meetings that involve at least two GECO members (of which one is Beni); GECO absences for marking absences of at a half-day or more.
• Notion for project organisation and agile content curation. Please use git repos for more static contents.
• Slack for spontaneous communications. Remember that they don’t last for more than 90 days.
• WhattsApp group for leisure and non-work related communications. You can share your phone number here.
• YouTube channel for sharing video material
• Website for our group portraits, blog, project descriptions, links to tutorials, courses, open positions, publications, etc.
• GitHub: Use issues and comments on pull requests for all code-related communications. This is important as it also serves as a resource for providing answers to frequently asked questions, or solutions for common issues.
• Zotero group for sharing papers and managing shared bibliographies to be used for citation management (e.g., with google docs plug-in)
• Please enter your contact details on this Notion page

Office and work

Absences and holidays

• Enter your absences (at least one full day), also work-related absences (conference attendance, etc.), in the GECO absences calendar and keep track of your working hours.
• Holidays cannot be accumulated. Holiday time not taken by the end of the year cannot be compensated during subsequent years.

Work travels and expenses

• Work-related travel is to be done by train (not airplane) up to a maximum of 8 hours train ride.

• More information here:

  Travels and expenses

Homeoffice

• We are not a virtual group. Spontaneous interactions and conversations over coffee and lunch are part of the scientific endeavour and life. We want to create an environment where this is facilitated. This requires a “critical mass” of people spending time, simultaneously, in the office at GIUB. Be part of that team. Therefore …
• Maximum 40% of your work time can be spent in home office.

System administration

• Information on networks, server access, printers, cloud storage is available here:

  https://github.com/geco-bern/system_administration

• An overview of lab infrastructure is here: https://github.com/geco-bern/lab_infrastructure

Onboarding

Arrival and onboarding

Offboarding

TBC