Becoming a member of the OBO Operations Committee

Operations Committee

• Membership
• Logistics
• Policy Decisions

Editorial Working Group

• Ontologies Review
• Principles Review

Technical Working Group

• PURL Requests
• OBO PURL Configuration
• Ontology tools and resources

Outreach Working Group

OBO Foundry Organizational Roles

• Overview

Note: This is not a formal process, but rather a piece of documentation to make the current informal process more transparent.

The OBO Foundry Operations Committee aims to facilitate the flow of operations within the OBO Foundry.

Potential members of the Operations Committee are identified from two possible sources: (a) Those who have been nominated by a current member; and (b) Those who have contacted a current member to express interest in joining. Either mechanism then invokes the following steps:

1. The candidate is formally nominated via email to the Operations Committee. This may or may not be preceded by an informal discussion during a committee call.
2. Current members, via email, express approval or raise objections in the form of conflicts or concerns.
   a. If conflicts/concerns arise, they are discussed at the next available OFOC call to find resolution.
   b. If no consensus is reached, a formal vote is taken.
3. Upon either (a) initial approval without objections, (b) resolution of conflicts/concerns, or (c) positive outcome of a formal vote, the candidate is formally invited, via email, to join the Operations Committee. At this time, the candidate is provided an explanation of the various duties expected from members (e.g. chairing calls, addressing issues on GitHub, joining a working group).
4. The applicant confirms they are willing to take up some of these duties.

Note that new members are strongly encouraged to become members of one of the subcommittees: Editorial Working Group or Technical Working Group.

Onboarding

Once a candidate has gone through the steps above and been confirmed as a new OFOC member, they need to onboard. Currently, the onboarding steps to be taken by or on behalf of a new OFOC member are listed in a Google doc called “OBO Operations Onboarding” in the OBO Operations gdrive folder. (When an OFOC member steps down, the appropriate steps are listed in the “SOP for members stepping down” section of that document.) This may in the future become a public GitHub doc, if that can be done safely.