By accessing or using the Versatile PhD website or any of its services, you agree to abide by the following Code of Conduct, which is considered part of the Terms of Service, along with the Privacy Policy. The Versatile PhD Code of Conduct is centered on five basic principles: Confidentiality, Tone, Truthfulness, Relevance, and Respect for Intellectual Property. If anything here is unclear to you, please email your questions to .

Confidentiality. Because some academics take a dim view of those who seriously consider nonacademic careers, The Versatile PhD protects member confidentiality in a number of ways, most notably by protecting the Forums and other members-only areas from search engines. (See the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service for more information.) Likewise, you are expected to protect the confidentiality of other members. Do not “out” anyone as being a member of the Versatile PhD community, do not share postings with non-members, and do not harvest other members’ information for any purpose.

Tone. The tone of this site is helpful and supportive. Please be collegial with each other even in disagreement. No flaming, trolling, constant negativity, or harassment, intimidation, abuse, or defamation of others, whether or not they are Website users.

Truthfulness. Please speak the truth as you know it. Do not make things up or spread information you know to be false. When registering as a member, please provide only truthful information to The Versatile PhD; you can still control what other members see by maintaining your profile to your liking.  Using your real name as your display name is encouraged but not required.

Relevance. Please post only relevant material (relevant = directly related to nonacademic careers for PhDs, ABDs and MAs). Do post personal stories of your own nonacademic work experiences; thoughts, questions and reflections about nonacademic careers; helpful, supportive responses to others; and nonacademic job announcements. Note: please post job announcements on the Jobs page, not in the Forums. Do not post irrelevant material or spam, virus warnings, commercial advertisements, or faculty position announcements.

Respect for Intellectual Property. The Versatile PhD respects your intellectual property by acknowledging that you retain the copyright to all of your writings on the Website. You may use your own writings however you wish: publish them elsewhere, write a book, whatever. However, you are expected to give equal respect to the intellectual property of others. Do not post copyrighted material from elsewhere unless you own the copyright or have express permission (just link to it rather than posting full text). Do not re-post material found on the Website on any other site or in any print publication, or even share it privately with non-members without explicit written permission of the author. Please also respect the intellectual property of The Versatile PhD, LLC. While each individual author retains copyright to his or her own writings on the site, collections of writings by multiple authors on the Website (for example, forum topics) are the intellectual property of VPhD and may not be re-published anywhere without our prior express written permission, which, frankly, is unlikely to be granted.  What’s said on the site, stays on the site.