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Governance Amendments

SC = Steering Committee AC = Active Contributors PL = Project Leaders PC = Project Channels Project = SciCat Project

Purpose

This document defines how the SciCat governance documents are amended after initial ratification.

Scope

Amendments apply to the following documents:

  • governance-entities/
  • roles/
  • procedures/

Documents under other/, project-components and utils/ are not subject to this procedure. They may be updated with approval by the Project Leaders (PL).

Document Versions

  • The authoritative version of the governed documents is the latest GitHub release of this repository.
  • An approved amendment takes effect when incorporated into a new GitHub release. Until then, the previously ratified release remains authoritative.

Tags follow semantic versioning, starting at v1.0.0 and with the following interpretation:

  • Major versions indicate amendments to in-scope documents that have been approved following the procedure below
  • Minor versions indicate changes to out-of-scope documents. For example, election results are recorded in roles/ and trigger a minor release.
  • Patch versions are for minor spelling or formatting changes.

Amendment Procedure

Proposal

Any Active Contributor may propose an amendment by pull request to this repository. The pull request must clearly describe the change and its rationale.

Approval

An amendment requires approval from both voting bodies:

  1. SC — at least two-thirds (2/3) of votes cast
  2. AC — at least two-thirds (2/3) of votes cast

Quorum

The same quorum requirements as Ratification apply:

  • SC: at least 2/3 of SC members must participate
  • AC: at least 15 Active Contributors must participate

Venue and Timing

Amendment votes are held at the annual SciCatCon meeting when possible. If SciCatCon is not feasible, a special session may be called by the Project Leaders.

Remote participation is permitted and count toward quorum and vote totals.

Announcement and Discussion

Amendments must be publicly announced through the official Project Channels (PC) with reasonable advance notice. The announcement must identify:

  • the pull request under vote
  • the date and location (or remote access details) of the vote
  • the eligible voting bodies and quorum requirements

A public discussion period should precede the vote, as described in the Voting document.

Effect

An approved amendment takes effect when incorporated into a new GitHub release. Until then, the previously ratified release remains authoritative.

Results must be documented and published through the official PC.

Relationship to Other Procedures

  • Amendment votes use the supermajority thresholds defined in this document.
  • Initial ratification follows the Ratification procedure.
  • Other Project decisions follow the Voting procedure unless this document states otherwise.
  • Documents not included in the scope may be updated with approval from a PL without the amendment procedure in this document.

Records

Amendment results must be recorded and made publicly accessible through the official PC, including:

  • the amendment pull request
  • quorum attainment for each voting body
  • vote totals
  • the effective date or release tag

Licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License.