Never let your Mind sleep.
FreeAstroScience is more than a science platform. It is a global movement of people who believe that knowledge belongs to everyone, that curiosity is a civic virtue, and that a mind kept awake is the best defense a society has.
Carl Sagan wrote that science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. We take him at his word. Science is not a warehouse of facts to be memorized; it is a habit of asking how we know what we claim to know. Culture is the record of humanity asking that same question in every language it has ever spoken, in paint, in music, in stone, in verse.
To everyone who has ever felt that science was written for somebody else: you were not failed by your own mind. You were failed by an explanation. We exist to write the better one, and to place it beside the art, the history, and the philosophy that give it meaning.
This Constitution sets out who we are, what we publish, how we govern ourselves, and what we owe our readers. It binds every person who writes, moderates, or speaks under our name.
Article I — Name, Identity, and Founding
Section 1 — Name
The organization is named FREE ASTROSCIENCE, also known as FreeAstroScience, FreeAstroScience.com, and FreeAstroScience — Science and Cultural Group. Its canonical home is https://freeastroscience.com/.
Section 2 — Nature and Character
FreeAstroScience is an online science and culture magazine and a large international community that operates as a single, unified entity. It uses the web and social media as responsible spaces for the dissemination of information and for the expression and exchange of ideas. It is published from Rimini, Italy, and it addresses readers everywhere.
Section 3 — Founding
FreeAstroScience was founded in June 2020 by Gerd Dani, an astronomy graduate with a master’s degree in physics, who serves as Founder, Director, and President. The founding purpose was, and remains, to break complex scientific and philosophical ideas into pieces a curious person can actually hold.
Section 4 — Motto
The motto of FreeAstroScience is Never let your Mind sleep · Igniting Curiosity. It is not decoration. Reason asleep breeds monsters, and every article we publish is an argument against that sleep.
Article II — Mission and Purpose
Section 1 — General Mission
FreeAstroScience promotes a worldwide cultural renaissance through free information, scientific education, and the advancement of culture. Its object is to dismantle the barriers that make demanding subjects appear closed, and to leave the reader better equipped than it found them.
Section 2 — Educational Philosophy
FreeAstroScience holds that free and inclusive education is a path to individual self-realization and social redemption, and that scientific and technological research is an engine of collective material development only when it is grounded in ethics. It holds equally that humanistic and philosophical inquiry drives social and intellectual growth, and that a society needs both engines running.
Section 3 — Science and Culture as One Undertaking
Science and culture are treated here as two halves of one undertaking, not as a subject and its ornament. A society that can calculate but cannot interpret is as poorly served as one that can interpret but cannot calculate. FreeAstroScience therefore publishes the humanities with the same seriousness, the same sourcing, and the same editorial review it applies to physics.
Section 4 — Informational Mandate
Content is delivered through articles, videos, podcasts, and other formats designed to provoke reflection and learning. All of it shall be free, independent, authoritative, and responsible.
Article III — Fields of Work
Section 1 — The Sciences
- Astronomy and astrophysics — the cosmos from our own solar system to the edge of the observable universe.
- Physics and mathematics — the fundamental laws of nature and the language in which they are written.
- Earth, climate, and environmental science — the ecological transition, biodiversity, and the physical systems that sustain life.
- Health and medicine — evidence-based science, in defense of universal access to care as a basis of human dignity.
- Artificial intelligence and computing — the technology, its limits, and its ethical consequences.
- Life sciences — evolution, ecology, and the biology that connects every organism on this planet.
Section 2 — The Humanities and Culture
- History and philosophy of science — how knowledge was actually built, including the wrong turns, the disputes, and the people who lost the argument.
- Scientific biography — the lives behind the results, told from documents rather than legend.
- Archaeology and cultural heritage — material evidence of the human past, and the duty to protect it.
- Art, music, and literature — where culture and science meet, borrow from each other, and shape human experience.
- Language, dialect, and oral tradition — local speech and folk memory as cultural wealth, not as quaintness.
- Ethics and public reason — how societies decide what to do with what they know.
Section 3 — A Single Standard of Evidence
A culture article cites primary sources and named scholars exactly as a physics article cites papers and named researchers. Neither half of the magazine enjoys a lower bar, and no piece is excused from review because its subject is interpretive.
Section 4 — Outside Our Scope
Sport, party politics, lifestyle, entertainment, and personal finance are outside the scope of FreeAstroScience. Culture is not a door through which off-topic material returns. A subject enters the magazine because it belongs to one of the fields above, or it does not enter.
Section 5 — One Subject, Treated Fully
Each article addresses one subject in depth. Where the available sources cannot support a substantial and complete treatment, the honest outcome is to publish nothing.
Article IV — Fundamental Values and Principles
Section 1 — Inclusivity
FreeAstroScience welcomes everyone without distinction of age, sex, nationality, religion, political orientation, sexual orientation, disability, or social and economic status.
Section 2 — Human Rights and Free Thought
FreeAstroScience protects the universal right of access to education and the freedom of thought, speech, and expression. Free expression is not a license to deceive: the right to speak does not include a right to be published here without evidence.
Section 3 — Equality and Social Justice
FreeAstroScience believes in equality, solidarity, and social justice. It supports gender equality in STEM, defends the civil rights of the LGBT+ community, and recognizes the full participation of people with disabilities in scientific and cultural life. It promotes a model of social and participatory economy founded on the centrality of work, which keeps the factors of production in balance.
Section 4 — Health and Human Dignity
FreeAstroScience defends the universality of health, physical and psychological alike, and access to care as an inalienable basis of human dignity.
Section 5 — Opposition to Violence
FreeAstroScience fights every form of physical and psychological violence, and condemns bullying and cyberbullying, violence against women, oppression, and human exploitation.
Section 6 — Peace and Dialogue
FreeAstroScience rejects war without reservation as a source of suffering, and promotes dialogue and peace among peoples and between states.
Section 7 — Environmental Stewardship
FreeAstroScience promotes the ecological transition of production processes, protects the environment and biodiversity, and supports green culture and sustainability.
Section 8 — Cultural Heritage
FreeAstroScience is committed to the preservation of historical identity, folk tradition, and language, and it treats local dialects as cultural wealth to be recorded rather than dialects to be corrected.
Section 9 — Intercultural Openness
FreeAstroScience is open to dialogue and engagement with other cultures and traditions, in the conviction that progress comes from the sharing of values.
Section 10 — Secularism and Ethical Foundation
FreeAstroScience respects all religions and holds no religious identity of its own. It promotes ethical values and human rights, and it condemns fanaticism and intolerance in every form.
Article V — Governance and Administration
Section 1 — The President
The President is the owner of the group, the pages, and the blog. The President admits and removes members, manages the social media channels, raises and administers funds, approves projects and publication plans, appoints and dismisses role-holders, and calls meetings. The President remains in office until resignation.
Section 2 — The Vice President
The Vice President is the right hand of the President, assisting and advising the Director in the management of the group. The Vice President verifies the effectiveness of members, assesses the quality of projects, manages internal and external relations, contacts prospective collaborators and evaluates their qualifications, and submits recommendations on admission to the management. The Vice President may act at their own discretion in the event of a violation or in the absence of the President.
Section 3 — Roles
Beyond the two offices above, FreeAstroScience recognizes the roles of Blogger, governed by Article VI, and of moderator, translator, and contributor, each appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Vice President. Every role-holder is bound by this Constitution in full.
Section 4 — Meetings and Decisions
Meetings are called by the President and may be held remotely. Members are heard, and their proposals are recorded. Final decisions on publication, admission, partnership, and expenditure rest with the President.
Section 5 — Volunteer Character
Participation in FreeAstroScience is voluntary unless a written agreement provides otherwise. No role confers ownership of the platform, and no role may be used to advance a private commercial interest.
Article VI — The Blogger
Section 1 — Definition and Standing
A Blogger is a person authorized to research, write, and publish signed content under the FreeAstroScience name. The Blogger is the working heart of this organization: readers meet FreeAstroScience through an article, and the person who wrote it carries the reputation of everyone else on the masthead.
Section 2 — Appointment
Candidates are proposed to, or approached by, the Vice President, who assesses subject competence, command of the working language, and alignment with the values in Article IV. A candidate submits one complete piece for review. On the Vice President’s recommendation, the President appoints the Blogger. Appointment carries a probationary period of three published articles, during which every piece is reviewed before publication.
Section 3 — Duties
- Accuracy. Every factual claim rests on a source the Blogger has actually read. Nothing is written from memory of the literature and presented as sourced.
- Attribution. Researchers, scholars, and institutions are named. Quotations are exact, in quotation marks, and traceable. “Experts say” is not attribution.
- Original work. Plagiarism, in any proportion and from any source, ends the appointment. Text, images, data, and translations are used only with a right to use them, and are credited.
- Honest limits. Where a source does not answer a question, the Blogger says so in the article. Naming a gap is publishable work; filling it quietly is not.
- Disclosure of assistance. Any use of artificial intelligence is disclosed and governed by Article VIII.
- Disclosure of interest. Any financial, professional, institutional, or personal relationship bearing on a subject is declared to the President before the piece is written.
- Corrections. The Blogger responds promptly to a substantiated correction request and cooperates in issuing the correction required by Article VII.
- Conduct. The Code of Conduct in Article IX binds the Blogger in public channels and in dealings with readers, sources, and colleagues.
Section 4 — Rights
- Byline. Every published article carries the name of the person who wrote it. A byline is never assigned to someone who did not write the piece, and the credentials of one person are never attributed to another.
- Integrity of the text. Editing for clarity, length, style, and accuracy is expected. An edit that changes the meaning of a claim, or the Blogger’s conclusion, requires the Blogger’s agreement, or the byline is withdrawn.
- Conscience. A Blogger may decline any assignment that conflicts with their conscience or professional judgment, without penalty.
- Freedom from commercial pressure. No sponsor, advertiser, donor, or partner may direct, approve, or veto the content of a Blogger’s article.
- Authorship. The Blogger retains authorship of their work and grants FreeAstroScience the right to publish, archive, translate, and promote it. Authorship is not transferred by publication.
- A hearing. Before suspension or removal under Section 6, the Blogger is told what is alleged and is given a fair opportunity to answer.
- Support. The Blogger may request editorial guidance, source access, and translation assistance, and is entitled to a decision on a submitted piece within a reasonable time.
Section 5 — Editorial Review
Every article is reviewed before publication against Article VII. The reviewer may return a piece for sourcing, request a correction, or decline it. A declined piece is declined with reasons. Review is a duty owed to the reader, not a judgment of the writer.
Section 6 — Suspension and Removal
The appointment of a Blogger may be suspended or ended by the President, on the recommendation of the Vice President, for any of the following:
- fabrication of a fact, a quotation, a source, a citation, or a digital object identifier;
- plagiarism, or use of copyrighted material without a right to use it;
- undisclosed publication of machine-generated text as the Blogger’s own reporting;
- undisclosed payment, sponsorship, or conflict of interest;
- repeated factual error after warning, or refusal to correct;
- conduct prohibited by Article IX.
Fabrication and plagiarism are grounds for immediate and permanent removal. Where an appointment ends, published articles remain attributed to their author, and any article found to be fabricated or plagiarized is retracted with a public notice stating why.
Article VII — Editorial Standards and Integrity
Section 1 — Editorial Mission
FreeAstroScience has an editorial mission and operates a strict fact-checking policy to guarantee the quality and authoritativeness of everything it publishes. All content shall be free, independent, authoritative, and responsible.
Section 2 — Evidence
Claims are traced to primary sources wherever a primary source exists: the paper, the dataset, the archive document, the object itself. Press coverage of a study is not the study. Where evidence is contested, the disagreement is reported rather than resolved by assertion, and the reader is told who disputes what.
Section 3 — Uncertainty
Scientific uncertainty is stated, not smoothed. A preliminary result is labeled preliminary, a preprint is labeled a preprint, and a single study is not reported as a settled conclusion. Overstating a finding damages the reader’s trust more than admitting its limits ever will.
Section 4 — Prohibition of Denialism and Misinformation
The dissemination of unsubstantiated material or hoaxes is prohibited. Non-scientific climate change denialist material, anti-vaccination material, pseudoscience presented as science, and conspiracist claims are forbidden across every FreeAstroScience channel. Reporting on such a claim in order to examine and refute it is not a violation of this Section; repeating it as though it were an open question is.
Section 5 — Corrections
A substantiated error is corrected promptly and visibly. Corrections are recorded on the article rather than made silently, dates of substantive revision are accurate, and an article that cannot be repaired is retracted with an explanation left in place. Anyone may report an error, and no one is penalized for reporting one.
Section 6 — Human Accountability
Every published item has a named human being answerable for it. Responsibility for a claim is never distributed until no one holds it.
The operating rules that implement this Article are published at our editorial policy and are subordinate to this Constitution.
Article VIII — Artificial Intelligence and Transparency
Section 1 — Principle
Artificial intelligence is a tool in the hands of a writer. It is never an author. It does not receive a byline, does not approve a claim, does not originate a source, and does not publish anything on its own.
Section 2 — Permitted Assistance
Artificial intelligence may assist with organizing research, translation, transcription, accessibility, copy editing, drafting support, and conceptual illustration, provided a human verifies the output and takes responsibility for it.
Section 3 — Prohibited Uses
- Publishing machine-generated text as original reporting or original analysis.
- Machine-generated quotations, citations, references, or digital object identifiers, in any quantity. A generated citation is a fabricated one.
- Presenting a generated image as a photograph, an observation, or an instrument product.
- Using a model as a substitute for reading the source.
Section 4 — Disclosure
The use of artificial intelligence at FreeAstroScience is disclosed publicly and in plain language on the editorial policy page. No article, caption, or credit may contradict that disclosure.
Section 5 — Editorial Independence and Funding
FreeAstroScience is free to read, and keeping it free costs money. Donations, sponsorship, and advertising are accepted only on the condition that they buy no influence over content. Commercial relationships that bear on a subject are disclosed on the piece. Where a sponsor’s interest and a reader’s interest conflict, the reader wins, and the money is returned if it cannot be kept on those terms.
Article IX — Code of Conduct
Section 1 — General Expectations
All followers, members of affiliated groups, and readers of the FreeAstroScience blog are expected to observe the rules of civil exchange. Disagreement is welcome and argument is the point; contempt is neither.
Section 2 — Prohibited Conduct
The following are strictly prohibited on every FreeAstroScience platform:
- The use of vulgar language, profanity, and obscenity.
- Accusations, insults, slander, and libel.
- The dissemination of unsubstantiated material or hoaxes.
- Posting non-scientific climate change denialist material.
- Discriminating against or insulting disabled people and members of the LGBT+ community.
- Political propaganda, including publications, posters, and banners of parties or movements.
- Incitement to fascism, racism, sexism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, discrimination, extremism, and violence.
- Posting pornographic material, including soft material.
- Harassment, stalking, threats, and the publication of another person’s private information.
- Spamming, posting messages unrelated to the purpose of FreeAstroScience and blatantly disruptive, or posting the same message more than once in the same day.
Article X — Enforcement
Section 1 — Sanction
Those who violate the rules set out in this Constitution will be immediately reported and banned without appeal from all channels of FreeAstroScience.
Section 2 — Authority
Enforcement rests with the President and the Vice President, and with moderators acting under their authority. A moderator’s action stands unless the President reverses it.
Section 3 — Role-Holders
Where the person concerned holds a role under Article V, the procedure in Article VI, Section 6 applies, including the right to be heard. This Section does not extend that right to conduct governed by Article IX.
Article XI — External Relations and Partnerships
Section 1 — Criteria for Collaboration
FreeAstroScience forms relationships and collaborations only with individuals, entities, and organizations whose conduct aligns with the values and principles written in this Constitution. A partnership that would require us to soften Article VII is declined.
Section 2 — Community
FreeAstroScience invites everyone who shares this vision to join its community as a reader, a member, a translator, or a Blogger. Free resources are sustained by the people who value them. Donations build educational material for teachers and students and keep the content free for everyone, and support of any kind is received with gratitude and spent on the mission.
Article XII — Final Provisions
Section 1 — Supremacy
This Constitution is the supreme governing document of FreeAstroScience. All activities, decisions, policies, and conduct within the organization shall conform to it, and any policy inconsistent with it yields to it.
Section 2 — Amendment
Amendments are proposed by the President or the Vice President, shall be consistent with the founding mission and the values in Article IV, and take effect on publication of the amended text on this page.
Section 3 — Interpretation
In any matter of interpretation, the spirit of this Constitution governs: to promote free, accessible, and inclusive scientific and cultural education for all.
Section 4 — Entry into Force
This revised Constitution supersedes all previous versions and enters into force on the date of its publication.
FreeAstroScience — Science and Cultural Group
Founded June 2020 by Gerd Dani · Rimini, Italy
Never let your Mind sleep · Igniting Curiosity