Governance

The CSA International Data and Metadata Working Group is the current custodian of the PPSR-Core models. In the future, as the Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGP) evolves, this decision might be revisited, especially considering the fourth foundational goal of the CSGP: to “support the collection and exchange of open and findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data by formalizing a citizen science data standard, creating a data directory, and building an open data portal.” We commit to an open and royalty-free model, i.e. the model shall remain open to access, re-use and extension/augmentation (new profiles).

A committee of the working group (the Model Governance Committee) has been established to manage the standardized models of the PPSR-Core. This committee is comprised of representatives from each of the established global citizen science associations who are typically interested and/or involved in IT or informatics as they relate to the citizen science domain. Management of the models includes the following functions:

• Maintaining the infrastructure used to curate and maintain the models themselves, as well as communicating the models and the managing framework throughout the global community. These include: the CSA PPSR-Core Github repository, the PPSR-Core Docusaurus web site; artefact archives; and working documents of the Committee.
• Maintaining and publishing the current accepted version of the PPSR-Core models and supporting information.
• Assessing and deciding on proposals to change the current accepted version of the models.
• Defining the decision and action protocols for version release and dissemination of changes to the models or supporting information.
• Ensuring that the current version and subsequent changes to the models are documented, published and promoted throughout the global citizen science communities.

If standardization bodies such as ISO, OGC, W3C, OBO foundry, or BIS wish to endorse or build upon the models, then we will work with them and support their institutional processes where possible.

How the published version gets updated

Anyone can lodge a submission for the Model Governance Committee to consider a change request (CR). All CRs submitted via the PPSR-Core Github repository issue tracker and pull requests will be considered by the Model Governance Committee and agreed CRs will be incorporated into a subsequent published version of the standard. See contribute for more details.