Suggested RWoT Paper Development Process

The suggested process below is one that the RWoT community has identified as resulting in the best papers. We define "best" as a respectful and collaborative effort between group participants often involving healthy debate and a balanced and thoughtful end product.

Topic ideation and development

Occurs during RWoT

  1. Topics are proposed by attendees interested in leading a team. This is your opportunity to step up to develop a paper as a lead author.
  2. Topics are discussed, explored, merged, and updated through a collaborative group process.
  3. Individuals choose which topics and team they wish to collaborate with.
  4. Throughout the rest of the workshop, teams develop their topics under the proposer's leadership and collaborate on an initial draft.
  5. Most teams use Google docs or something similar for real-time collaboration

Planning next steps

Towards the end of RWoT, the team reports the status of the draft and plans for completing the paper. Specifically, team reports the following:

  1. Lead author for post-event coordination
    • The lead author is the person who will drive this process (for the group) after the event.
    • The lead author is has final editorial decision making authority over the paper.
    • The topic proposer may choose to continue as lead author, collaborate with one or more additional lead authors, or choose someone else to take on the leadership role.
  2. Timeframe / schedule for the completion of the paper.
  3. Contribution/editing tasks and deadlines.
  4. Scope limitations.

Revise the paper

  1. Lead author facilitates ongoing collaboration among team members, through whatever tools or means they choose; this sometimes means weekly phone calls, other times, email discussion is sufficient to move the work forward.
  2. Lead author ensures that all participants have an opportunity to contribute, that all voices are respectfully heard, and that any disagreements have a reasonable airing.
  3. All authors incorporate feedback. Lead author accepts/rejects revisions with the goal of maximizing both consensus and paper quality.
  4. Lead author defines who qualifies for listing as a co-author or a collaborator, using the guidelines from the Journal of American Medical Association:
    • substantial contributions to conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and
    • drafting of the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
    • final approval of the version to be published; and
    • agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
  5. All contributors who meet the 4 JAMA criteria should be designated as authors. Those contributors who don't may be listed as "contributors", thanked for their contributions, or given other "non-author" credit.
  6. Generally, contributors may ask to be listed in the paper in any professionally respectful fashion, typically listing name, affiliation, email, and/or Twitter handle. The lead author may, at their discretion, establish a stricter listing criteria, for example, to maintain consistency across the list of credits.
  7. Once “final” lead author sends paper to all contributors for review.
    • For reasons of privacy and out of respect for individuals’ affiliations, no mention of any contributor should be published without explicit approval.

Paper completion

  1. When all contributing authors have confirmed their attribution, the paper is sent to staff for final editorial review and layout.
  2. When editorial is finished, they send the finalized paper back to lead author for review & acceptance.
  3. Any final bug fixes, typos, misattributions, etc., are resolved between the lead author and editorial.
    • Lead author (or additional team members, if applicable) accepts.
  4. Once the layout and copy is truly final, editorial posts the final version of the paper.

Healthy Management of Conflicts

Teams should make every effort to resolve conflicts within their group by following a process similar to the one stated below:

It’s very important that this phase remain respectful and solution-oriented. If the conflict results in violations of the RWoT Code of Conduct, any person witnessing the violation should report the incident immediately to the Community Resiliency Team.

  1. Lead authors should make every effort to ensure that every participant has been able to contribute to the best of their ability and that every contribution has been heard and considered before finalizing the paper.
  2. If a contributor doesn't feel like their input has been addressed by a final paper, or that for any reason the paper doesn't represent their views, they may withdraw their name from the paper and submit an alternate paper as long as it meets the basic paper development guidelines of RWoT.
  3. If there is an unmendable breakdown in process, or if a contributor is being harassed or feels uncomfortable with behavior in the group, they should contact the Community Resiliency Team (CRT).

This is version 1.0 of the RWoT paper best practices. This is a living document and will be updated as necessary by the RWoT Community Resiliency Team.