An editorial board decides what goes into The ELSA Way. Every change is made in public on GitHub, so you can see who changed what, when and why.
Editorial board¶
The editorial board is being formed. It is led by WP Integration of the ELSA AI Lab Northern Netherlands and will include people with clinical, research, ethics and patient or community backgrounds. Members will be listed here once confirmed.
The board reviews and approves contributions, and keeps the content accurate and consistent. It decides on changes to the structure of the book and settles disputes about content. It also checks that patient and community perspectives are represented.
Decision-making¶
How a change is decided depends on its size:
| Change | Examples | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Minor | Typo fixes, clarifications, small additions | One editor approves |
| Significant | New sections within existing chapters | Two editors approve |
| Major | New chapters, structural changes | Discussed at an editorial board meeting; consensus required |
| Contested | Any change on which editors or contributors disagree | Escalated to the editorial board, with a two-week period for community comment |
Roles¶
| Role | Responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Editor | Reviews pull requests; approves minor and significant changes |
| Senior editor | Reviews major changes; takes part in editorial board decisions |
| Patient or community representative | Makes sure patient perspectives are reflected; reviews whether content is accessible to non-specialists |
| Domain expert reviewer | Gives specialist review of chapters in their clinical field |
| Contributor | Proposes and writes content; responds to review |
Contributing describes the day-to-day process from a contributor’s side, from a new issue to a merged pull request, and Triage and review describes it from an editor’s side. The review labels on GitHub follow the decision levels above.
Version history¶
The ELSA Way uses Git for version control, and the repository on GitHub is public. Each page’s full change history is on GitHub. Significant changes are described in the pull request that made them.
Conflict of interest¶
Contributors and editors declare any commercial, professional or financial interest in the topic they work on. Contributors do this in the issue: the Suggest content form has a field for it, so the declaration is public in the issue. Editors declare theirs when they review. Anyone with a conflict of interest in a topic does not review contributions on that topic.