Draft research stewardship: publication boundaries, licensing baseline, and provenance

CITATION.cff

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+cff-version: 1.2.0
+message: >-
+  Please cite the specific document, its identified contributors, and the exact
+  revision you used. This project-level citation is a fallback, not a claim of
+  sole authorship, peer review, or endorsement. It adds no license restrictions.
+title: "Root Sequence: research commons"
+authors:
+  - name: "Root Sequence"
+url: "https://github.com/Root-Sequence/root-sequence"
+preferred-citation:
+  type: generic
+  title: "Root Sequence: research commons"
+  authors:
+    - name: "Root Sequence"
+  url: "https://github.com/Root-Sequence/root-sequence"
+  notes: >-
+    Living, multi-document project. Cite the relevant file and exact Git revision;
+    retain document-level author, source, AI-assistance, and review-status records.

PROJECT-CONTEXT.md

@@ -21,6 +21,7 @@ It is not the whole organization and does not absorb project-specific implementa
 | What is this repository? | [`README.md`](README.md) |
 | How does Root Sequence research across fields? | [`research/method.md`](research/method.md) and [`research/method-router.md`](research/method-router.md) |
 | Which shared methods support evidence-weighted inquiry and collective judgment? | [`research/methods/README.md`](research/methods/README.md), [`research/methods/epistemic-contrast.md`](research/methods/epistemic-contrast.md), and [`research/methods/deliberative-inquiry.md`](research/methods/deliberative-inquiry.md) |
+| Where are the proposed publication, licensing, provenance, and reuse safeguards? | [`governance/README.md`](governance/README.md); review-pending guidance, not adopted restrictions |
 | How does the organization connect? | [`ECOSYSTEM.md`](ECOSYSTEM.md) |
 | How is this repository organized? | [`root_map.md`](root_map.md) |
 | Where should a new thought go? | [`THOUGHT_ROUTING.md`](THOUGHT_ROUTING.md) |
@@ -37,6 +38,8 @@ The repository contains active and historical writing, sourced research scaffold
 
 `research/`, including `research/methods/`, `systems/`, and `concepts/` hold current inquiry; `analysis/`, `ideology/`, and `futures/` apply or extend it; `founding-texts/` preserves origins; `commons/` produces reusable artifacts; `site/` is a reader-facing projection; `cli/` contains experiments; `incubator/` holds temporary, explicitly non-canonical project seeds pending migration or a final home.
 
+`governance/` holds proposed research-publication, licensing, attribution, and collaboration procedures. It does not replace broader commons work, organization-level maintenance stewardship, or project-specific consent and release rules. The procedures and project-level `CITATION.cff` add no restrictions to existing licenses.
+
 ## Ecosystem connections
 
 - **Focused inquiries:** Liberated Intelligence and UCF develop narrower questions.
@@ -54,7 +57,7 @@ These are typed transformations, not a command hierarchy.
 
 - Treat relationships—dependencies, interfaces, feedbacks, authority, translations, flows, conditions, and histories—as first-class objects of inquiry.
 - Route mechanisms to the fields and methods that study them, then reconnect findings without erasing domain differences.
-- Use epistemic contrast before convergence and deliberative inquiry before consequential collective judgment; preserve uncertainty, dissent, and revision conditions.
+- Use epistemic contrast before convergence and deliberative inquiry before consequential collective judgment or authorization; preserve uncertainty, dissent, and revision conditions.
 - Preserve one canonical home and link rather than copying undifferentiated material.
 - Distinguish evidence, interpretation, hypothesis, normative position, and fiction.
 - Treat disagreement and failed connections as information.

README.md

@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@ The Liberation Cycle, Visibility Loop, and Roots → Signals → Growth → Frui
 - [`site/`](site/README.md) — reader-facing Public Seed website source; not a replacement for research or the Wiki
 - [`research/`](research/README.md) — bounded research inquiries and versioned synthesis papers; underlying concepts and evidence retain their canonical homes
 - [`research/methods/`](research/methods/README.md) — shared error-correcting inquiry methods, including epistemic contrast and deliberative inquiry
+- [`governance/`](governance/README.md) — proposed research-publication, licensing, attribution, and collaboration guidance; author review pending
 - [`founding-texts/`](founding-texts/README.md) — founding texts, early models, manifestos, normative essays, and historical orientations
 - [`systems/`](systems/README.md) — analytical principles, models, and methods for understanding system behavior
 - [`concepts/`](concepts/README.md) — shared definitions, cross-project frameworks, design principles, and methods
@@ -148,6 +149,12 @@ This convention is intended to keep repository work self-indexing rather than re
 
 ---
 
+## Research stewardship — proposed
+
+[Research stewardship](governance/README.md) collects the publication-review checklist, licensing baseline, provenance conventions, and responsible-use expectations. These are AI-assisted, review-pending proposals, not new restrictions on the existing CC0 dedication. [Citation metadata](CITATION.cff) helps identify the project; cite specific documents and revisions wherever possible.
+
+---
+
 ## 🔄 Use & Remix
 
 **CC0 / Public Domain**

governance/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+# Research stewardship
+
+**Status:** proposed operational guidance; AI-assisted draft; author review pending.  
+**Prepared:** 2026-10-22.  
+**Scope:** publication, reuse, provenance, collaboration, and the boundaries of this research commons.
+
+Root Sequence should remain useful to people without treating openness as an obligation to disclose everything. These proposals distinguish what the project publishes, what its licenses actually permit, what collaborators expressly agree to, and what it asks people to do voluntarily.
+
+**Learning from a commons does not confer authority over it.** Equally, lawful independent learning, criticism, commercial use permitted by a license, or parallel discovery is not automatically exploitation.
+
+## Find the right safeguard
+
+| Question | Canonical document |
+| --- | --- |
+| Is this material ready and safe to publish? | [Publication review](publication-review.md) |
+| What permissions exist, and what choices remain? | [Licensing decisions](licensing.md) and the [dated license audit](licensing-audit-2026-10-22.md) |
+| How should authorship, sources, and AI assistance be recorded? | [Attribution and provenance](attribution-provenance.md) |
+| How should reuse, collaboration, and concerns be handled? | [Responsible use and collaboration](responsible-use.md) |
+| What is complete, and what requires a decision? | [Implementation checklist](implementation-checklist.md) |
+| Which external sources support the legal/technical distinctions? | [References](references.md) |
+| What is the underlying research question? | [Knowledge, institutional power, and stewardship](../research/knowledge-power-and-stewardship.md) |
+
+## What this does not do
+
+This is not a new license, a retroactive restriction, a contract with every reader, or a promise to control downstream ideas. The existing [CC0 dedication](../license), applicable file-specific terms, third-party rights, and law remain distinct from these proposals. Citation requests cannot turn CC0 into an attribution-required license. See [licensing](licensing.md).
+
+The proposals do not establish a governing body, represent other projects' consent, or change repository visibility. Public drafts remain public. The word `draft` means not adopted; it does not mean confidential.
+
+## Relationship to existing work
+
+[Project Stewardship](https://github.com/Root-Sequence/.github/blob/main/PROJECT_STEWARDSHIP.md) owns maintenance and documentation propagation. The [commons](../commons/README.md) owns broader commons practice and proposals. This directory owns the narrower publication/reuse procedure, not a competing account of the whole project.
+
+Project-specific safety, consent, archive, contributor, and release rules remain authoritative within their scope. Where rules conflict, surface the conflict and obtain a decision rather than silently overriding it. Do not copy private working records into public governance files.
+
+[Repository introduction](../README.md) · [Repository map](../root_map.md) · [Contribution guidance](../contributing.md)

governance/attribution-provenance.md

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+# Attribution, authorship, and provenance
+
+**Status:** proposed convention; AI-assisted; author review pending.  
+**Purpose:** make contributions traceable without claiming ownership of every idea or mistaking a historical record for validation.
+
+## Credit the actual contribution
+
+Distinguish originating a question, connecting existing work, writing, editing, coding, testing, reviewing, maintaining, and supplying lived or community knowledge. Project initiation and curation do not establish sole authorship of every repository item. Credit prior work and contributors with the names and level of disclosure they consent to; do not expose private identities to strengthen a credit claim.
+
+For a specific result, cite its document-level authors and sources, exact path, version/commit, date where known, and relevant limitations. Do not invent a first-discovery date, DOI, affiliation, peer review, successful experiment, or author approval. The [root citation file](../CITATION.cff) identifies the project as a whole; it is not a substitute for item-level credit.
+
+GitHub recognizes root-level `CITATION.cff` metadata on the default branch.[^cff] A citation file proposed only on a pull-request branch does not update that interface. Once the file is present on the default branch, GitHub uses it for the repository's citation prompt; this does not establish item-level authorship, completed review, or policy adoption.
+
+## Minimal provenance block
+
+Use visible metadata or existing frontmatter rather than creating a competing database.
+
+```yaml
+title: "Exact title"
+status: "working draft; author review pending"
+canonical_path: "repository/path"
+contributors:
+  - name: "approved public credit"
+    roles: ["specific contribution"]
+first_documented: null
+revised: "YYYY-MM-DD"
+source_revision: "exact commit when available"
+intellectual_sources: []
+permissions: "actual applicable notice, including exceptions"
+ai_assistance:
+  used: true
+  tasks: ["only tasks actually performed"]
+  human_review: "pending or specific completed review"
+```
+
+`first_documented` means the earliest evidence located, not proof of universal novelty. A Git commit identifies a version; its date alone is not independent certification of first authorship. Retain original drafts, research notes, review decisions, and source links where appropriate, with private evidence kept private.
+
+## AI assistance
+
+Describe what the tools did and what humans actually contributed, checked, rejected, or revised. Do not add a human-author claim simply because a person approved a prompt, and do not infer all intellectual work was automated because AI assisted with expression or accessibility.
+
+The U.S. Copyright Office's 2025 guidance distinguishes sufficient human expressive authorship from purely generated material; AI assistance does not automatically defeat protection, and prompts alone do not establish it.[^ai] Provenance helps explain the work but does not guarantee copyright, novelty, or correctness.
+
+**Disclosure for this stewardship draft:** ChatGPT assisted with repository/source inspection, organization, drafting, and change preparation in response to Rae Lovejoy's request. The draft has not received Rae's passage-by-passage review or legal review. The request to prepare it is not evidence of review of every sentence.
+
+## Citation request versus legal obligation
+
+Ask readers to acknowledge useful contributions even when the applicable license does not require it. Clearly label that request as scholarly/community practice, not a new condition on CC0 material. For material under an attribution license, follow that license's actual conditions and any lawful exceptions; consult the [license decision guide](licensing.md).
+
+Suggested wording:
+
+> Please cite the specific document and revision you used, credit its identified contributors and sources, and distinguish your adaptations from the original. This request does not add restrictions to the applicable license or imply endorsement.
+
+## Versioned release practice
+
+For a reviewed release, record the exact revision, review status, contributors, scope, limitations, and source list. Consider an independently hosted archival deposit only after a separate public-disclosure decision. No archive deposit, DOI, public timestamping service, or new release is created by this proposal.
+
+## References
+
+[^cff]: GitHub, [About CITATION files](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/about-citation-files), checked 2026-10-22.
+[^ai]: U.S. Copyright Office, [NewsNet 1060: Copyrightability report](https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html), 2025-01-29; checked 2026-10-22.
+
+[Research stewardship](README.md)