Lab Norms

This is a living document. We revisit it at the start of each fall semester, and any member can propose amendments at any time.

Table of Contents

I. Values and Conduct

II. Research Standards and Practices

III. Operations and Logistics

I. Values and Conduct

Principles

Work-Life Balance

  • Work-life balance is important for sustainable growth and well-being. I strongly discourage working late at night or on weekends. If you find yourself consistently doing so, that is a signal we need to adjust your workload.
  • Health is always the highest priority. Please inform me if you feel sick, pause your work, and focus on your recovery.
  • You have unlimited vacation and remote days. For travel, please let me know in advance (a week for short absences, a month for longer ones) so I can coordinate ahead.
  • If you are struggling, whether with research, with personal matters, or with your mental/physical health, please tell me. I will work with you to find a path forward.

Mutual Respect

  • Mutual respect of everyone’s time and effort is necessary in all research activities. We should make sure anything we present to others reflects the best of what we can do, whether in informal discussion or formal presentation.
  • Being actively present at group meetings and on Slack is expected. Active presence means asking questions, giving feedback, engaging in discussion, and finding opportunities to help your lab mates. Lurking does not count.
  • Respond to Slack messages within one business day and to emails within two business days. This being said, nobody should expect replies on evenings, weekends, or holidays.

II. Research Standards and Practices

Submission Standards

  • We only submit papers to top-tier venues (e.g., CHI, CSCW, UIST, UbiComp, ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, and similar venues). For unfamiliar domains, the CCF-A list is a good starting point.
  • A full paper draft needs to be ready 7 days before the submission deadline. If a draft is either not ready or does not meet our quality expectation at that point, we shall discuss what alternative deadlines to target.
    • The quality expectation is the average quality of all the papers our lab has published before.

Research Expectations by Role

  • PhD students, visiting scholars, and postdocs: Our mutually agreed-upon expectation is that a year of active research results in at least one first-authored full-paper submission of publishable quality to a top-tier venue. We will set project milestones together at the start of each semester and review them at the reflection meeting.
    • From all my mentorship with more than 20 research assistants, no one has failed to meet this expectation as long as they actively engaged in research activities and continuously reflected on feedback.
  • Master’s and undergraduate RAs: To do meaningful research, you need to dedicate significant time and effort to it. I will work with you to scope an appropriate expectation that genuinely advances your learning.
    • For reference, a four-credit course at Northeastern typically requires 12 hours per week, which should be roughly the minimum amount of time a supporting author is expected to contribute to research.

Authorship

  • We discuss authorship at the start of every project and revisit it whenever the project scope changes. Any changes to authorship require consensus from all co-authors.
  • All authorship requires a substantial intellectual contribution to at least two of the following: conceptualization, methodology/study design, system building, data collection, data analysis, drafting, or critical revision.
    • Running code under detailed instructions or proofreading alone warrants acknowledgment, not authorship.
  • Author order reflects different responsibilities and will be determined by the advisors or the corresponding author. For external collaborations, we agree on authorship expectations in the first joint meeting and document the agreement.
    • The corresponding author is the senior advisor.
    • The first author is responsible for leading the paper preparation progress, weekly project meetings, revision, rebuttal, and resubmission. Co-first authorship is appropriate when two people contributed comparably.
    • The middle authors are ordered by decreasing contribution.

Open Science and Code

  • All research code lives in the lab’s GitHub organization. Every project repository should include a README with setup instructions, a LICENSE file, and sufficient documentation for a new member to reproduce key results. Code should be committed regularly and reviewed by at least one other lab member before merging to main.
  • Public release of code and data is our default. When participant privacy prevents data sharing, we release analysis code, anonymized summary statistics, codebooks, and detailed methodological descriptions instead. For user studies with pre-specified hypotheses, we pre-register on OSF or AsPredicted when feasible.
  • All technical discussions related to code should happen on GitHub (issues, pull requests, discussions) rather than Slack, because Slack messages disappear while GitHub is searchable and permanent.

AI Tool Usage

  • LLM tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, etc.) may be used for searching information, code scaffolding, debugging, brainstorming, and grammar checking.
    • I view LLMs as amplifiers of existing skills: the stronger your own expertise, the better the results you produce with LLM assistance. For this reason, I encourage you to develop core competencies first before relying on these tools.
  • All final text must be written, verified, and intellectually owned by the human authors. Disclose any substantive AI tool usage in the paper’s acknowledgments, and follow venue-specific policies when they exist.

III. Operations and Logistics

What You Can Expect from Me

  • I offer one-on-ones for PhD students, postdocs, and RAs biweekly or as-needed. These meetings are your space to discuss research, career goals, skill development, or anything else on your mind.
  • I will write recommendation letters for any member I have worked with on a paper submission that meets our publishable quality standard.
    • This is also contingent on you giving me at least four weeks’ notice and a summary of your accomplishments.
  • If I have concerns about your progress, commitment, or approach, I will tell you directly in our regular meeting so you can make changes. You should never be surprised by such feedback at a reflection meeting.

Semi-Annual Reflection

  • At the end of each semester (approximately January and July), we will have a structured one-on-one reflection meeting. We will review progress against the goals we set, discuss what worked and what did not, recalibrate expectations for the next period, and talk about career development.
    • If there are concerns about progress, I will have already raised them in our regular meetings well before this.

Conference Travel and Funding

  • I will sponsor the first author(s) of accepted full papers to attend the presenting conference. For co-authored or workshop papers, travel support depends on the funding situation, and we will discuss options case by case. There are usually internal student travel grants and volunteer opportunities that could offset costs.
  • All academic-related expenses should be submitted in a timely manner. It becomes very difficult to get reimbursement after 30 days.

Calendar Events

(remote participation is fine)

  • Group meeting (participation is expected): Weekly, 60 minutes. Format rotates among research updates, paper discussions, invited talks, and skill-share sessions.
  • Project meetings (participation is expected): Weekly, 30 minutes per active project. If you cannot attend, notify all collaborators at least 24 hours in advance.
  • One-on-one meetings: Biweekly or as-needed for RAs, PhD students, and postdocs.
  • Writing workshop (participation is expected if you have a submission deadline within 3 months). We will NOT submit a paper if you fail to attend twice in a row without an appropriate reason.

Getting Started

If you are joining the group as an RA, visiting scholar, or collaborator, complete the following within your first two weeks. We will approve your membership on lab platforms if you agree with the norms listed on this page.

  1. Read this norms document in full. If you have questions or disagreements, raise them with me before signing on.
  2. Join the lab Slack and Notion workspace. We use Notion to track project status.
  3. Set up an account on the lab’s GitHub organization.
  4. If you will be involved in a project that collects data from human participants, complete Northeastern IRB CITI training and share your certificate with your advisor.
  5. Attend at least two group meetings before diving into independent work.
  6. Schedule an initial one-on-one with me to discuss your research interests, goals, and a development plan for the semester.

Bingsheng Arthur Yao · May 2026

© Bingsheng Arthur Yao. These norms reflect the specific working agreements of our group and are shared here for transparency to current and prospective members. Please do not copy, redistribute, or republish without permission.