1  Guidelines

To contribute, you should familiarize yourself with Quarto and GitHub

Quarto is a publishing system that allows you to create books and websites using Markdown. If you are already familiar with Markdown, you will find it easy to use Quarto.

To learn more about Quarto books visit https://quarto.org/docs/books.

If you like to contribute work with forks and pull requests

Anyone can contribute to the book by forking the repository, making changes, and then submitting a pull request. This allows for a collaborative approach to writing and editing the book.

All pull requests will be reviewed and merged by the curators. To be merged, a pull request needs at least two approvals from the curators.

If you start a new chapter or subsection, the curators might ask you to write more if the contribution is minor.

Lines of text must be wrapped after each sentence

This makes it easier to allow for changes in the text without creating merge conflicts.

If chapter becomes large enough, put it into a folder

Chapters that are large enough can be organized into folders, with single files containing the subsections. This helps to keep the repository organized and makes it easier to navigate.

At the beginning of a chapter have a box on “what you should know before reading this chapter”

This box should contain links to where to get this knowledge. It also helps to set the audience for the chapter (e.g. rather wetlab or computer scientist)

A chapter can furthermore link to another chapter or its own subsections.

When you start or want to start on a chapter/subsection, check the discussion

If there is a discussion for your topic, join it and indicate your interest. Feel free to start a new discussion if you want to write about a topic that is not yet covered.

If you start a new chapter or subsection, don’t forget to add a link to it in the _quarto.yml respectively the chapter overview.

How to start writing: if you have materials from your teachings/articles - write about it

Add important terms into the glossary / terminology chapter

If you come across important terms that are not yet defined in the glossary, please add them.

There are two versions of the book: development and published (main) version

The development version may contain just bullet points and ideas for new chapters and is not complete, but allows for quick changes and additions.

The published version contains finished chapters and sections, which still can be changed later, but are in a good state for readers.