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🛠️ SUNCAST Governance Model

SUNCAST is committed to building an open, inclusive, and sustainable ecosystem of tools and workflows for data-driven solar tomography and heliophysics research. To support a diverse contributor community, SUNCAST provides two complementary paths for participating in software development.

🚀 1. Organization-Initiated Projects (Top-Down Path)

SUNCAST may create repositories directly under the suncast-org GitHub organization when:

  • the project is a flagship workflow,
  • it supports core deliverables (e.g., pyGSFIT, pyAMPP, pyGSK),
  • or it is part of an NSF-funded activity.

Contribution workflow

  1. The repository is hosted under suncast-org.
  2. Contributors fork the repository to their own accounts.
  3. All additions or fixes are proposed via Pull Requests (PRs).
  4. A maintainer reviews, discusses, and merges the PR.

This ensures transparency, reproducibility, and long-term code sustainability.

🌱 2. Contributor-Initiated Projects (Bottom-Up Path)

SUNCAST also supports independent scientific innovation. Any researcher, student, or collaborator may:

  1. Create and develop a new tool in their own personal GitHub repository.
  2. Mature the project independently during its early exploratory phase.
  3. When ready, request that the project be transferred to the SUNCAST organization.

After transfer

  • Full commit history is preserved (provenance protected).
  • The original author may serve as a maintainer.
  • Additional contributors participate through forks + PRs.

This path enables open participation and encourages early creativity without requiring prior permission from SUNCAST.

📜 3. Guiding Principles

All SUNCAST repositories and contributions follow:

FAIR Principles

  • Findable
  • Accessible
  • Interoperable
  • Reusable

CARE Principles

  • Collective Benefit
  • Authority to Control
  • Responsibility
  • Ethics

TRUST Principles

  • Transparency
  • Responsibility
  • User Focus
  • Sustainability
  • Technology

These values guide software design, documentation, licensing, and community engagement.

🧭 4. Governance Structure (In Formation)

SUNCAST is establishing a Governance Board consisting of:

  • core developers,
  • domain scientists,
  • early-career contributors,
  • representatives from participating institutions.

The Board will:

  • maintain development standards,
  • review contribution proposals,
  • approve repository transfers,
  • guide documentation and reproducibility,
  • coordinate training and community support.

Until the Board is formally established, the SUNCAST PI team serves as the interim governing body.

🤝 5. How to Get Involved

You can contribute by:

  • submitting issues or feature requests,
  • improving documentation,
  • contributing examples or tutorials,
  • submitting Pull Requests,
  • developing independent projects and transferring them into SUNCAST,
  • participating in SUNCAST workshops and community forums.

SUNCAST welcomes contributors from all backgrounds and especially encourages participation from MSIs, PUIs, students, and early-career researchers.