Review Process
In short: contributions start as a GitHub issue, become a pull
request against dev, and are reviewed first for completeness and then
by the SSWG for methodological soundness. This page sets out the steps
and what reviewers look for.
This guideline site adapts the intake workflow used by the GSF's SWI Guidance and SCI Open Data projects.
Intake workflow
- Discussion: raise the submission (a data source, a tool, a case study or a correction) as a GitHub issue first, using the relevant template. This gives the SSWG and the wider community a chance to weigh in before content is written.
- Draft PR against
dev: once discussion settles, open a pull request targeting thedevbranch with the content change. - Initial review: a maintainer checks basic completeness. Does it
follow the page conventions? Are sources cited and numbers labelled?
Are assumptions disclosed? Does
node scripts/check-pages.jspass? - Working group review: the SSWG checks methodological soundness. Does it represent the SCI for Web Specification correctly? Does it avoid creating, relaxing or tightening a requirement? Does it avoid resolving an open question on the group's behalf?
- Consistency review: periodically, on merge from
devtomain, the whole site is reviewed for internal consistency: cross-references still resolve, and new pages do not contradict existing ones.
What a submission should include
Whether it is a data source, a tool or a case study, a submission should identify:
- Title and description: what is being submitted and why.
- Type: for example carbon intensity source, embodied-emissions dataset, measurement tool or case study.
- Components served: which of
O_server,O_client,O_network,M_server,M_networkandM_clientit applies to. - Method: how any figures were measured, calculated or derived.
- Submitter: for attribution and follow-up.
- Dates: when the data was collected or the assessment performed, and when it was last reviewed.
- Pages affected: which page(s) of this site it relates to.
- Gap filled: what was missing without it.
- Assumptions and exclusions, with reasons.
Questions reviewers ask
For a data source or tool specifically:
- Who publishes and maintains it, and is it actively maintained?
- Is it public, and under what licence?
- Does it measure, or model? If it models, is the method documented well enough to evaluate?
- Does it rely on bytes transferred? If so, is it presented only where
the specification allows (the last-resort
O_networkmethod, and never as an allocation basis forM_network)? - Are its limitations and exclusions stated?
Please submit any comments you have here.