Principle Review Process
This page describes the process for reviewing, updating, and creating OBO Foundry Principles by the OBO Foundry Editorial Working Group (EWG).
For the following, steps 1-5 are internal to the EWG and steps 6-7 are internal to the OBO Operations Committee.
- Discuss the principle during an Editorial Working Group (EWG) call.
- Write up proposed revisions as a GitHub issue (not a pull request).
- Inform the Editorial WG via email that the ticket needs discussion.
- Allow a two-week commenting period on the GitHub issue tracker, during which members of the EWG can suggest improvements.
- If necessary, discuss changes made during the commenting period and finalize the text.
- Once the EWG agrees on a final version, a member presents the text to the OBO Foundry Operations Committee for discussion during a meeting or via the issue tracker.
- Once the wording is approved by OBO Operations, a member of the EWG makes a pull request reflecting the consensus of previous discussions. Note that the pull request should be marked as ‘draft’ if it is a new principle.
- For new principles or major changes to existing principles, announce the proposal on the obo-discuss mailing list and the obo-community #general Slack channel and request public feedback.
- Allow a two-week commenting period on the pull request.
- If the feedback includes major changes or objections, re-discuss during an OBO Operations call and re-do any relevant steps indicated above.
- At the end of the commenting period, assuming no major changes are needed, a member of the EWG will merge the pull request (removing ‘draft’ status if appropriate) and thereby make the changes public.
The need for a new principle can arise when an existing principle tries to cover too much and requires splitting, or as new needs arise within the community.