TITLE: Mission, vision, and principles of the protocols.io company
AUTHORS: Lenny Teytelman

[DESCRIPTION]
This is an internal document outlining our company culture and expectations for everyone who joins the team.

[STEPS]
SECTION: Mission
1. The broad mission of protocols.io is to accelerate research by:
increasing collaboration and sharing among researchers
improving efficiency of researchers by reducing mistakes and re-discovery
SECTION: Mission
2. The protocol-specific mission is to make it easy to share method details before, during and after publication.

We want to increase the reproducibility and reliability of published papers, ensuring that sharing corrections and optimizations is always welcome and easy.
SECTION: Vision
3. It is critical that we benefit researchers using protocols.io: both readers and authors of content.

A new graduate student just joining a laborarory should  find protocols.io useful from day one, years before she has results to publish. We should be a friend of the researcher, not a burden at publication time.

This means that as a company, we prioritize functionality that helps users and saves them time throughout the research process.
SECTION: Vision
4. In the long run, we want protocols.io to "communicate" with the equipment that researchers use, to reduce manual labor and mistakes.
SECTION: Core values
5. Honesty and Transparency

We are honest with our team, investors, funders, and users. 

If any of our strategy, business model, policies, discussions, emails or other electronic messages, features of the platform are shared publicly, we would not be embarassed.

SECTION: Core values
6. Integrity

The trust of the research community is hard to win in a world of scams and corporate shortcuts. Everything we do is measured against our mission and vision. 
SECTION: Core values
7. Openness

Open Access is a foundational premise of protocols.io. 

Subscription to knowledge is a block to progress and collaboration. But our openness applies to other aspects too: we are open to advice, questions, criticism, suggestions, and discussion. We are open to all of these from our users, funders, partners, and internally within our team.
SECTION: Culture and principles
8. Constructive Feedback and Communication

We value feedback to each other and feedback from our users. While we don't control the input from the researchers, we always assume positive intent from all communications and strive to give constructive feedback in polite and non-aggressive ways.
SECTION: Culture and principles
9. Mistakes

We all make mistakes and expect that everyone on our team will as well. We also expect everyone to learn from the mistakes whenever possible and strive to avoid making the same ones.
SECTION: Culture and principles
10. Code of Conduct

Within the company and at outside events, we expect our team members to adhere to our Code of Conduct.

Physical, sexual, and verbal harassment are unacceptable.
Do not discriminate against people because of their identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, age, class background, ability, religion, and more).
We expect participants to work together to create a welcoming, inclusive, and safe(r) environment for people from diverse backgrounds.

Please take the time to carefully read about what constitutes harassment and discrimination in the Code of Conduct. 

Any report of a potential violation will be taken seriously and investigated as detailed in the Code of Conduct.