Online Community Rules & Etiquette
Thank you for being part of the Society of Research Administrators International (SRAI) online community. To ensure the best possible experience for all members, we have established some basic guidelines for participation.
By joining and using this community, you agree that you have read and will follow these rules and guidelines. Please take a moment to acquaint yourself with these important guidelines. If you have questions, contact SRA International at membership@srainternational.org.
In order to preserve an environment that encourages both civil and fruitful dialogue, we reserve the right to delete posts and suspend users in this community who violate these rules.
SRAI’s Code of Ethics is located here: https://www.srainternational.org/about/who-we-are
The Rules
- Respect others. Focus on the content of posts and not on the people making them. Please extend the benefit of the doubt to newer guests and members; there’s no such thing as a stupid question.
- Respect the purpose of the community. Use the community to share successes, challenges, constructive feedback, questions, and goals instead of products or services that you provide. If you’ve found a product or service helpful, please share your experience with the group in a respectful way.
- Use caution when discussing products. The information posted on the discussion groups and in the libraries is available for all to see, and comments are subject to libel, slander, and antitrust laws.
- All defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive or illegal materials are strictly prohibited. Do not post anything that you would not want the world to see or that you would not want anyone to know came from you.
- Respect intellectual property. Post content that you have personally created or have permission to use and have properly attributed to the content creator.
- When posting items in our collaborative environment, please indicate if the item is not available for reuse. It’s also advisable to contact the owner of any material if you would like to reuse it.
- Post your message or documents only to the most appropriate communities. This helps ensure all messages receive the best response by eliminating "noise."
- Abuse/harassment: You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone or incite other people to do so.
- Private information: You may not publish or post other people's private information (such as home phone number and address) without their express authorization and permission.
- Politics and election integrity: You may not use this Community for the purpose of manipulating or influencing persons to vote for or against specific individuals or issues in elections. SRAI is a 501(c)(3) organization and is prohibited from engaging in partisan political activities. While SRAI is not responsible for content posted by you, it must avoid even the appearance of partisanship and must, therefore, limit posts related to the state, local and national/international politics.
- Impersonation: You may not impersonate individuals, groups, or organizations in a manner that is intended to or does mislead, confuse, or deceive others.
- You can’t mislead others by operating fake, fraudulent or multiple accounts. This includes using misleading account information to engage in spamming, abusive, or disruptive behavior.
Discussion Group Etiquette
- State concisely and clearly the topic of your comments in the subject line. This allows members to respond more appropriately to your posting and makes it easier for members to search the archives by subject.
- Send messages such as "thanks for the information" or "me, too" to individuals, not to the entire list. Do this by using the "Reply to Sender" link in every message.
- Do not send administrative messages, such as “remove me from the list,” to the group. Instead, use the web interface to change your settings or to remove yourself from a list. If you are changing email addresses, you do not need to remove yourself from the list and rejoin under your new email address. Simply change your settings.
- If you are looking to advertise an open position, please visit the SRAI Career Center or contact SRAI at info@srainternational.org for more information.
Disclaimer and Legal Rules
SRAI is not responsible for the opinions or information posted on this site by others. We disclaim all warranties with regard to information posted on this site, whether posted by SRAI or any third party; this disclaimer includes all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall SRAI be liable for any special, indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data, or profits, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of any information posted on this site. The software supporting the Community allows you to upload, submit, store, send or receive content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through the Community, you give SRAI (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Communities), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving the Community, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using the Community. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to the Community.
Do not post any defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, or illegal materials. Do not post any information or other material protected by copyright without the permission of the copyright owner. By posting material, the posting party warrants and represents that he or she owns the copyright with respect to such material or has received permission from the copyright owner. In addition, the posting party grants SRAI and users of this site the nonexclusive right and license to display, copy, publish, distribute, transmit, print, and use such information or other material.
Messages should not be posted if they encourage or facilitate members to arrive at any agreement that either expressly or impliedly leads to price fixing, a boycott of another's business, or other conduct intended to illegally restrict free trade. Messages that encourage or facilitate an agreement about the following subjects are inappropriate: prices, discounts, or terms or conditions of sale; salaries; profits, profit margins, or cost data; market shares, sales territories, or markets; allocation of customers or territories; or selection, rejection, or termination of customers or suppliers.
SRAI does not actively monitor the site for inappropriate postings and does not on its own undertake editorial control of postings. However, in the event that any inappropriate posting is brought to the attention of SRAI, we will take all appropriate action. Anyone can report accounts violations of these Community Standards via the CONTACT US button on our webpage. These reports are used in aggregate to help refine our enforcement systems and identify new and emerging trends and patterns of behavior.
We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement and terminate accounts of repeat infringers according to the process set out in the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you think somebody is violating your copyrights and want to notify us, you can find contact us via the CONTACT US button on our homepage.
SRAI reserves the right to terminate access to any user who does not abide by these guidelines.
We may modify these terms or any additional terms that apply to a Community to, for example, reflect changes to the law or changes to the Community. You should look at the terms regularly. We’ll post notice of modifications to these terms on this page. We’ll post notice of modified additional terms in the applicable Community. Changes will not apply retroactively and will become effective no sooner than fourteen days after they are posted. However, changes addressing new functions for a Community or changes made for legal reasons will be effective immediately. If you do not agree to the modified terms, you should discontinue your use of that Community.
The Community lets you share information with other people, and you have control over how you share. When you’re signed in and interact with the Community, your name and photo may appear next to your activity. SRAI’s privacy statement is located here: https://www.srainternational.org/privacy