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Clarify roles and terminology in conventions document #5

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37 changes: 26 additions & 11 deletions pages/style-guide/conventions.md
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Expand Up @@ -20,30 +20,30 @@ When you're drafting and you're unsure ("is it 'open source' or 'open-source'? I
| **ELIXIR Europe** | The parent organisation, when context needs disambiguation | No hyphen. |
| **ELIXIR Hub** | The central coordination office of ELIXIR Europe | Hosted at EMBL-EBI in Hinxton, UK – not part of ELIXIR-UK. |
| **Node** | One of the 23 national nodes; ELIXIR-UK is one | Capitalised when it's the formal entity ("the UK Node", "our Node"). |
| **Head of Node** | The role | Capitalised. ELIXIR-UK has joint Heads of Node. |
| **Head of Node** | The role | Capitalised. ELIXIR-UK currently has two joint Heads of Node. |
| **Steering Committee** / **Management Committee** | Governance groups | Capitalised. |
| **Coordination Office** | The team running ELIXIR-UK day-to-day | Capitalised. |
| **All Hands** | The annual community meeting | Capitalised. Full form: "All Hands meeting". |

## Naming our community and audiences

Picking the specific noun is usually clearer than reaching for the catch-all. None of the "consider instead" terms below are banned – use them when they're genuinely the right word – but most of the time a more specific noun does more work.
Picking the specific noun is usually clearer than reaching for the catch-all. None of the "consider instead" terms below are banned – use them when they are genuinely the right word – but most of the time a more specific noun does more work.

| Prefer when you can | Consider instead of | Why |
|---|---|---|
| **member** / **community member** | "stakeholder" | Members belong to the community; "stakeholder" is a useful catch-all in formal governance contexts but rarely clearer in editorial copy. |
| **researcher** / **data steward** / **trainer** | "user" (in most contexts) | Use the specific role unless you're literally talking about service usage statistics. |
| **researcher** / **data steward** / **trainer** | "user" (in most contexts) | Use the specific role unless you are literally talking about service usage statistics. |
| **partner** | "stakeholder" | When referring to a collaborating organisation. |
| **funder** | "stakeholder" | When referring to UKRI, BBSRC, MRC etc. |
| **service** | "tool" or "platform" (when imprecise) | An ELIXIR-UK Service is a formal designation. Don't dilute the term. |
| **service** | "resource", "tool" or "platform" (when imprecise) | An ELIXIR-UK Service is a formal designation. Don't dilute the term. |
| **an ELIXIR-UK service**, **a service endorsed by ELIXIR-UK** | "ELIXIR-UK's [service]", "our service" | We endorse services; we don't own them. Avoid possessive constructions that imply ownership. |

## FAIR and data terms

| Term | Form | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| **FAIR** | Always all-caps | Stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable. Spell out on first use in formal documents. |
| **FAIRification** | One word, capital F | The process of making data FAIR. |
| **FAIRification** | One word, capital FAIR | The process of making data FAIR. |
| **FAIR-aligned** | Hyphenated as adjective | "a FAIR-aligned policy", "data that is FAIR-aligned". |
| **FAIR data** | No hyphen | "FAIR data management", not "FAIR-data management". |
| **dataset** | One word | Not "data set". |
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -90,16 +90,31 @@ Acronyms that come up often:

| Acronym | Full form | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AHM | All Hands Meeting | |
| BBSRC | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | |
| CDR | Core Data Resource | |
| DMP | Data Management Plan | |
| ECR | Early Career Researcher | |
| EoI | Expression of Interest | |
| EOSC | European Open Science Cloud | |
| FAIR | Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable | |
| FG | Focus Group | |
| HDR UK | Health Data Research UK | Always written with a space, never hyphenated. |
| HoN | Head of Node | |
| LLM | Large language model | Lowercase when spelled out. |
| MRC | Medical Research Council | |
| NC | Node Coordinator | |
| RDM | Research data management | Lowercase when spelled out. |
| TRE | Trusted Research Environment | |
| RIR | Recommended Interoperability Resource | |
| RPO | Research Performing Organisation | |
| SDE | Secure Data Environment | |
| HDR UK | Health Data Research UK | Always written with a space, never hyphenated. |
| SIAB | Scientific and Industry Advisory Board | |
| TC | Teleconference | Usually a Zoom meeting. |
| TeC | Technical Coordinator | |
| TrC | Training Coordinator | |
| TRE | Trusted Research Environment | |
| UKRI | UK Research and Innovation | |
| BBSRC | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | |
| MRC | Medical Research Council | |
| EOSC | European Open Science Cloud | |
| LLM | Large language model | Lowercase when spelled out. |
| WP | Work Package | |

## Word forms

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