Goals of Ethics Procedures#

Overview#

This section outlines the four sets of goals that drive ethics procedures at security and privacy research conferences. These goals were identified through analysis of conference policies and through interviews with senior and junior community members in a recent CCS paper¹.

Goal Set 1: Impact on the Outside World#

The normative regulation of research activities regarding their impact on the outside world is framed in terms of avoiding harm. Closely related perspectives emphasize the need to prevent malicious uses of research. It can also be understood as protecting people and communities from negative consequences. In addition, considerations extend beyond direct human impact to include potential effects on environmental and computational resources, as well as infrastructures, all of which should be taken into account when assessing possible harm arising from S&P research.

Harm can be understood in two-fold way: (a) a negative consequence directly connected to research activities (e.g., exposing human subjects to excessive stress during an experiment); (b) a negative consequence resulting from the publication of research results (e.g., a study disclosing an unknown vulnerability).

Goal Set 2: Impact on the S&P Community#

The impact of ethics procedures on the S&P research community is commonly framed as fostering greater ethical awareness, encouraging researchers to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their work, and promoting education on responsible research practices. In this sense, such procedures can be understood as a pedagogical tool that supports learning how to conduct research in more ethically responsible ways. Beyond individual learning, they also contribute to the development of shared community norms and expectations around ethical conduct. This process of community shaping is reinforced by conferences, which assert and enforce these norms through their authority to reject submissions on ethical grounds. These objectives are reflected, for example, in initiatives such as mandatory ethics sections at USENIX Security 2025 and the expansion of ethics-related requirements in conference calls for papers.

Goal Set 3: Influencing Behavior of Individual Community Members#

Goal set 3 is closely related to the preceding set but places greater emphasis on individual members of the research community rather than the community as a whole. In this view, formalized ethics review processes or individual feedback for ethics sections and considerations provide concrete guidance to authors and reviewers and can contribute to improving the overall quality of submitted work. These individual-level objectives are tightly interconnected with community-level goals, as the practices and decisions of authors and reviewers collectively shape broader research norms and standards. At the same time, established community expectations influence individual behavior: failure or refusal to adhere to prevailing ethical standards may result in sanctions, most notably through the rejection of submissions.

Goal Set 4: External Perception#

Goal set 4 focuses on how the S&P research community is perceived and evaluated by external stakeholders, including private companies, government agencies, legal institutions, and the broader public. A key element here is to prevent the publication of papers perceived as unethical by the general public. From this perspective, ethics procedures serve to strengthen the reputation and legitimacy of S&P conferences, research institutions, and academic research more broadly. In addition, such measures may function as a form of risk management, including, in some cases, reducing potential legal exposure for conference organizers.

References#