Scope
These standards apply to staff writers, editors, freelancers, guest authors, columnists, photographers, illustrators, researchers, translators, reviewers, and other contributors whose work appears under the Online Safety name. A commission or publication agreement may add requirements but may not reduce the core duties of honesty, originality, disclosure, and cooperation with corrections.
Identity and Biography
Contributors must provide accurate identity and contact information to the editor. Public bylines normally use the contributor’s real professional name. A pseudonym may be approved for a documented safety, legal, cultural, or public-interest reason, but the responsible editor must know the contributor’s verified identity unless exceptional circumstances make that impossible and are specifically recorded.
Biographies must be factual, proportionate, and verifiable. Contributors may not invent qualifications, employment, awards, clients, publications, locations, or expertise. Online Safety does not use fictitious author profiles or synthetic portraits presented as real people.
Originality and Rights
Submitted work must be original or must clearly identify material previously published, adapted, translated, or created with another person. Plagiarism, disguised copying, fabricated reporting, duplicate publication without disclosure, and unlicensed use of protected material are prohibited.
The contributor must have the rights necessary for text, images, data, audio, video, and documents supplied for publication. Quotation, fair use, fair dealing, public-domain status, open license, permission, and other legal bases must be represented accurately.
Accuracy and Source Responsibility
Contributors are responsible for the factual foundation of their work and must provide source material, notes, recordings, calculations, documents, or contact details when reasonably requested by the editor. A contributor must distinguish direct knowledge, sourced fact, estimate, allegation, opinion, inference, prediction, and hypothetical example.
Quotes must not be invented, materially altered, or taken out of context. Statistics must be traceable. Legal and scientific claims require appropriate care. An editor may require additional verification, a subject-matter review, a request for comment, or removal of a claim that cannot be adequately supported.
Conflicts of Interest
Before commissioning and before publication, contributors must disclose financial interests, employment, consulting, investments, gifts, travel, family relationships, political roles, advocacy positions, litigation, personal disputes, and other connections that could reasonably affect, or appear to affect, the work.
Disclosure does not automatically disqualify a contributor. The editor may approve the assignment with a public disclosure, modify the scope, add independent review, or decline the work. Concealing a material conflict may lead to correction, removal, termination of the relationship, or a public editor’s note.
Gifts, Travel, and Access
Contributors should not accept cash, personal favors, valuable gifts, or benefits intended to influence coverage. Low-value customary items should be declined where practical or handled under an editorial decision. Travel, accommodation, event access, devices, samples, or services supplied by an interested party must be disclosed to the editor and, where material, to readers.
A free product or trip does not guarantee publication or favorable treatment. Review items should be returned, donated, purchased, or otherwise handled under a documented arrangement where practical.
Sponsored and Commercial Work
A contributor must tell the editor if a proposed subject is connected to a current or recent client, employer, investor, sponsor, affiliate arrangement, or paid campaign. Commercial material must follow the Sponsored Content and Affiliate Disclosure policy and may not be represented as independent journalism.
Contributors may not sell access to Online Safety, promise publication, offer guaranteed ranking, accept undisclosed payment from a subject, or use the publication’s name to obtain personal benefits.
Artificial Intelligence and Automation
AI tools may be used only in a manner consistent with accuracy, confidentiality, intellectual property, privacy, and editorial instructions. Permitted assistance may include transcription, translation support, data cleaning, brainstorming, structure, or copyediting, but human verification and authorship responsibility remain mandatory.
Contributors must disclose material AI use to the editor. They must not submit model-generated facts, sources, quotations, citations, legal analysis, images, or reporting without verification. Confidential source information, unpublished drafts, personal data, or restricted documents must not be uploaded to an external AI service without authorization and an appropriate data-protection assessment.
Online Safety may require a public disclosure where AI or synthetic media materially shaped the published work or where a reasonable reader would consider that fact relevant.
Fairness, Harm, and Conduct
Contributors must treat sources, subjects, colleagues, and readers with professional respect. Harassment, discrimination, retaliation, coercion, bribery, deceptive impersonation, evidence tampering, and unnecessary intrusion are prohibited. Undercover or deceptive methods require exceptional public-interest justification and prior editorial approval.
Coverage involving children, victims, private individuals, sexual violence, self-harm, health, identity, security, or vulnerable communities requires heightened care. Public curiosity is not automatically public interest.
Embargoes, Off the Record, and Confidentiality
Terms such as “off the record”, “background”, “not for attribution”, and “embargoed” must be agreed before information is supplied. A source cannot unilaterally impose a restriction after disclosure. Contributors should clarify ambiguous terms and document important agreements.
Confidential material must be stored and shared in a manner proportionate to risk. Only authorized people should receive access. A contributor must promptly report loss, compromise, legal demand, or accidental disclosure.
Editing and Publication
Online Safety may edit commissioned work for accuracy, structure, length, tone, legal risk, clarity, accessibility, headlines, metadata, and house style. Material changes to a contributor’s argument or factual meaning should be discussed where practical. Final publication authority rests with the responsible editor.
A commission does not guarantee publication. Payment, kill fees, rights, expenses, deadlines, and exclusivity are governed by the written agreement.
Corrections and Continuing Duty
Contributors must promptly notify the editor of a possible error, undisclosed conflict, source concern, legal issue, or material development affecting published work. They must cooperate with correction, clarification, evidence review, and complaint handling. Refusal to correct a demonstrated error may be disclosed to readers where relevant.
Enforcement
Breaches may result in additional editing, delayed publication, rejection, correction, disclosure, suspension, removal from future assignments, termination, repayment where contractually justified, or referral to an appropriate authority. The response will be proportionate to intent, harm, recurrence, and cooperation.
Contact
Questions and contributor declarations should be sent to contributors@onlineSafety.org.