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Electronic Media Policies

1. Purpose
2. Background information from the NIH web page guidelines
3. Definitions
4. Scope
5. FELLOW-L Policy
6. Web Page Policy
7. Web Security

Contact Information:The Felcom electronic media guidelines were set up by the Fellow-L steering committee in Aug 1996. For questions please send email to felcomwebmasters@mail.nih.gov.

Purpose:This document establishes policies for the FELLOW-L mailing list and WWW pages set up by the Postdoctoral/Clinical Fellows Committee at NIH. It establishes Felcom guidance for:

• All posts appearing on the FELLOW-L mailing list;
• information made available to the public using the Felcom WWW pages;
• acceptable uses for Web pages created by Felcom.

All NIH policies relating to electronic mailing lists should also be followed by the maintainers of the FELLOW-L mailing list. The web page guidelines in this document should be considered an addition to the NIH Web page guidelines. All web pages created or maintained by Felcom members must follow the NIH web page guidelines as well as those in this document.

Definitions for most of the terms in this document are available from the NIH Web page guidelines. In addition, the following terms are defined:

FELLOW-L manager(s). The postdoctoral/clinical fellow or fellows who manage the FELLOW-L mailing list. This includes access to the Felcom email account (felcom@helix.nih.gov) and approval of posts to FELLOW-L. This group may also be referred to as the FELLOW-L steering committee.

Scope This guidance applies to:

• all authorized users of the Felcom account.
• all FELLOW-L volunteers.
• all posts on the FELLOW-L mailing list.
• all Felcom web managers. It also applies to employees of the Office of Education or contractors who create web services for the Fellows Committee.
• all web pages, scripts and text pages created by or for Felcom, whether resident on an NIH server or not.

FELLOW-L Policy: The Fellow-L mailing list was created to promote fellowship between postdoctoral staff and to provide a forum for educational, scientific and employment issues. All posts on FELLOW-L must be approved by the FELLOW-L manager.

Appropriate posts on FELLOW-L include:

• Announcements about scientific awards and training
• Announcements about non-scientific issues that are directly related to scientific training at NIH, such as visas.
• Scientific requests for information, equipment and collaboration
• Job announcements
• Conference networking, such as room-sharing.
• Non-commercial house-sharing announcements by Fellows, i.e., 'room available' postings by Fellows who want to share a house or apartment they do not own.
• Fellow-l Discussions. Such discussions will be initiated by the FELLOW-L steering committee. The topics chosen must be related to postdoctoral/clinical scientific, career-related, or NIH-related issues. If these discussions are made available on the Felcom web site, a disclaimer must be added stating that the opinions expressed by contributors to the discussion are not necessarily those of Felcom or NIH.

Inappropriate posts on FELLOW-L include but are not limited to:

• Commercial advertising
• Non-scientific solicitations (e.g. *requests* for housing)
• Resumes
• 'Flaming' -- rude or abusive posts
• Derogatory comments about fellows, supervisors, NIH employees or other persons.

Decisions about the appropriateness of a particular post or topic are made by the FELLOW-L managers in accordance with the guidelines in this document. If a post is considered inappropriate for FELLOW-L, it will not be edited but will be sent back to the author with a copy of these guidelines.

Web Page Policy:

Web pages present an opportunity to provide considerable amounts of data and information to the public, with immediate access to new material. Felcom volunteers may create Web pages that are clearly mission related, and do not violate the acceptable use policies of the systems or networks used to publish them.

Required Content:All Felcom Web pages must include the following information:

• The name Felcom, and a link to the main Felcom page.
• Date the page was last revised.

In addition, the main Felcom page should have a link to the NIH home page.

Permissible Content of Felcom Web Pages:Examples of appropriate Felcom Web page material may include:

• Information about Felcom -- e.g.bylaws, Felcom representatives, meetings.
• Announcements of Felcom projects -- e.g. the FARE awards
• NIH reports or announcements of interest to fellows.
• FELLOW-L discussions (see Note)
• links to other web server systems of interest to fellows. (See Note)

Note: Felcom web managers should make every effort to review the material on non-Felcom, non-NIH web pages that are linked from the Felcom web page. However, since WWW pages can frequently change, all Felcom pages which contain external links should also contain a disclaimer such as the following:

The information, opinions, data, and statements contained herein are not necessarily those of Felcom, the National Institutes of Health, or the U.S. Government, and should not be interpreted, acted on or represented as such.

It is important to avoid giving the impression that Felcom or NIH is endorsing information, or a commercial product described in an external site. A similar disclaimer should be attached to any pages involving personal opinions by fellows, such as FELLOW-L discussions. OITM has additional warnings and disclaimers which may also be used or cited as needed.

Felcom Web page managers should periodically review material on the Web page to determine whether it is accurate and up-to-date. Information, particularly time-sensitive information such as grant announcements and press-releases, should be posted as soon as possible. Web managers should promptly update or remove out-of-date information.

Inappropriate Material for Felcom Web Pages: Inappropriate material includes, but is not limited to:

• material subject to the Privacy Act;
• personal information about any Felcom member apart from his/her NIH contact information;
• personal information about any other person;
• commercial solicitations;
• copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright holder;
• links to sites unrelated to professional information (e.g., soap opera digests, special interest political groups, collections of photos of entertainers, etc.);
• material which is sexually explicit, discriminatory or intended for harassment purposes.

Web Security:

Felcom Web managers must be aware of security issues and vulnerabilities when maintaining the Felcom web page. Although Felcom does not plan to operate its own server, the web managers should be aware of any security risks inherent in their pages. Web server scripts that can be accessed by users must be carefully checked prior to installation on a Web server. System administrators may elect to restrict the use of server-side scripts so that individual users are not able to create them as part of the material they publish. If made aware of any potential security holes in the Felcom web data, they should take prompt action to correct any such problems.