Welcome to the Online Ethics Center (OEC). The Center for Engineering, Ethics and Society (CEES) at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) manages the OEC. CEES and the OEC have benefited through generous grants from the National Science Foundation and support from NAE members, in particular Harry E. Bovay Jr. You can read more about the history of the OEC in the About section.

Can't find something? Ask a question or let us know what you like or dislike, and areas for improvement, by emailing OnlineEthics@nae.edu.

 

Resource Highlights

  • Responsible Research

    This section of the OEC contains cases, discussions, guidelines, and regulations bearing on the responsible conduct of research, including both issues of research integrity and issues of the treatment of the research subject.

  • Cases and Scenarios

    Contains all of the cases and scenarios available in the Online Ethics Center for use in classes, seminars, or research.

  • Ethics Community

    Biographies of administrators and faculty at academic institutions, as well as persons in business and industry and at non-profit organizations with careers involving science, engineering, technology, ethics, and society.

  • Ethics Codes and Guidelines

    Includes guidelines and codes of ethics from scientific and engineering professional societies from several countries, as well as essays on the topic. Some are available in Spanish.

  • Bibliographies

    This section contains annotated bibliographies on relevant topics as well as links to online libraries related to ethics in science and engineering

 
Current CEES Projects
CEES projects have developed two new sections for the OEC– on Climate and on Energy. We are constantly updating those sections; suggestions welcome!

Permissions & Reuse

If you wish to use information that you find on the Online Ethics Center, please refer to "Disclaimer and Citations" in the "About" section, where you can find our general guidelines for citations, permissions, and republication.

Forums

  • OEC Forum

    A moderated space for general informal comments, questions, and answers.

  • Synthetic Biology Points of View

    Enter the discussion about synthetic biology. Add your comments to this forum to let us know what you think.

  • Case Discussion Forum

    A forum for discussing ethically significant problem situations that may arise in any area of engineering research and practice.


What's New?