Rioxx: The Research Outputs Metadata Schema – Governance Group Charter

  • Draft 23 July 2019
  • Final - Updated 04 September 2019

This charter (the "Charter") sets out the responsibilities and procedures for governance of Rioxx: The Research Outputs Metadata Schema ('Rioxx') by the Governance Group. This Group was established under the auspices of the UK Confederation of Open Research Repositories (UKCORR), in conjunction with Antleaf, to oversee the development and ongoing maintenance of Rioxx.

Mission and guiding principles

The mission of the Rioxx Governance Group is to:

  1. Develop and maintain the Rioxx Metadata Applications Profile in line with the requirements of open repository infrastructure.
  2. Administer and manage Rioxx change requests and approve their implementation.
  3. Promote the wider needs of open scholarly communications by ensuring Rioxx delivers optimal exposure of open repository content thereby better fulfilling the goals of open access and open science more generally.
  4. Ensure decisions surrounding development and maintenance of Rioxx prioritises implementation-agnostic approaches and, where possible, harnesses existing open standards and protocols.
  5. Disseminate to the repository and open science communities updates to Rioxx and promote its adoption across UK open repository infrastructure and, where relevant, beyond.

Group governance

a) The Rioxx Governance Group (‘RGG’) shall be responsible for overall oversight of Rioxx.

b) Membership of the RGG should be representative of the UK repositories community and ergo supported in its activities by UKCORR. Membership of the RGG will comprise UKCORR members and representatives from other stakeholders critical to the maintenance and lifecycle of Rioxx.

c) A list of current RGG members will be published on the Rioxx website (http://www.Rioxx.net/).

d) The RGG will implement procedures for the selection of RGG members from the UKCORR membership in instances where RGG members can no longer continue in their role and/or following the election of new UKCORR Committee members, as per the UKCORR constitution.

e) The RGG may invite other stakeholders to participate in the activities of the RGG to support the process of revising Rioxx.

f) The RGG will be chaired by a member of the UKCORR Committee, typically the UKCORR Technical Officer. An alternative UKCORR Committee member may be appointed chair in lieu of a Technical Officer.

g) The RGG will encourage and promote transparency and openness in its activities. At a minimum the ongoing development and maintenance of Rioxx will demand:

a. Requirements and proposals for revising Rioxx be gathered, discussed and collated openly in the Rioxx Github repository.

b. Discussions at RGG meetings be recorded and openly published on the UKCORR or Rioxx website.

c. Open communication of Rioxx updates via the Rioxx website.

h) The RGG will solicit, consider, approve or reject recommendations or proposals for revisions to Rioxx, based on the process described in the next section. The RGG shall also be responsible for coordinating communication and dissemination of Rioxx updates to relevant communities of practice.

RGG Roles

Contributors: anyone in the community that contributes to the development and maintenance of the Rioxx metadata application profile.

Maintainers: These are contributors who have the ability to commit directly to the Rioxx Github repository and are responsive to contributions or changes from Contributors. In the case of the RGG the sole maintainer will be Antleaf (https://www.antleaf.com/).

RGG Voting

  1. Revisions to Rioxx gathered via the open GitHub repository will be presented to the RGG for consideration and approval.
  2. The RGG shall aim to operate on the basis of consensus. In any RGG decision requiring a vote in order to move Rioxx development forward, RGG members will vote on a one vote per voting member basis.
  3. RGG meetings and ergo decision-making will require at least a majority of all voting members for a motion to be carried. The RGG may continue to meet if quorum is not met but will be prevented from making any final decisions until the electronic votes of absent RGG members have been counted.
  4. Decisions made by electronic vote without a meeting require a majority vote of all voting members of the RGG.
  5. In the event a vote cannot be resolved by the RGG, any voting member of the RGG may refer the matter to the UKCORR Chair for assistance in reaching a resolution.

General Rules and Operations

The RGG members will engage in the work of the RGG in a professional manner consistent with maintaining a cohesive community, while also maintaining the goodwill and esteem of UK repository community and the open science community more generally.

Intellectual Property Policy

All contributions made to the maintenance and development of Rioxx are understood to be made under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.

Amendments

This Charter may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the entire RGG and assuming the amendment is in furtherance of the Rioxx mission and guiding principles specified in section 'Mission and guiding principles'.