COS
Product development and maintenance : COS’s primary roles are the technical development of the preprints repository, aggregation service (SHARE), submission workflow, user and administrator interfaces, integrations with data repositories and other services, and service administration. This will be accomplished with a substantial investment of personnel across the infrastructure team. Management/team leads will devote 2 person months each. Infrastructure staffing includes Product with team lead and 1 FTE product manager; Labs with CTO and 1 FTE developer for exploration, prototyping, and architecture; Engineering with Technical Lead and Senior Project Manager and 6 FTE developers for SHARE (2), service and repository integrations (1), Preprint services (2), add-ons/service integrations (1) and 1 FTE designer and a 0.33 FTE technical evangelist for service and repository integrations; QA with QA Lead with 1 FTE QA Associate for automated, manual, and regression testing.
Technical partner resourcing will be administered through COS. A 0.67 FTE developer and 0.5 FTE senior test engineer will provide key deliverables of conversion tool set. Professional and consulting fees are also reserved for specialized support or mini-awards to external groups and individual freelance developers that offer relevant expertise and open-source services, and for nominal awards to biomedical data repositories to facilitate API integrations. We include a yearly expert group meeting for planning and co-development of conversion and screening tools.
Marketing and community engagement : COS will lead marketing initiatives for The Commons and collaborate with other stakeholders on community development. This includes participation and promotion at society meetings and conferences; partnership development with service providers, societies, funders, institutions, and journals; webinars and education campaigns; and execution on the marketing strategy. Management/team leads will devote 2 person months each. Community staffing includes the community manager with support from 1 FTE community relations specialist, and the marketing manager with support from 1 FTE marketing specialist. Travel resources for 24 trips per year will support marketing and community engagement at society and relevant service meetings, and bringing key partners together for collaboration. Substantial resources are identified to support specific marketing activities for earned, shared, owned, and paid media. This budget can be adjusted if responsibilities for marketing will be shared with ASAPbio. Details of budget estimates for each activity appear as a budget appendix.
Sustainability : COS will lead development and implementation of a sustainability model. Work on establishing the sustainability model and transitioning to a fully distributed stakeholder funding model will begin immediately so The Commons can transition smoothly to the new model after the grant period. Sustainability staffing includes the Funder and Donor Relations lead with support from a grants specialist and 1 FTE sustainability account manager. This team will work with the GB and other stakeholders on the definition and strategic plan for the sustainability model, and the execution of that model with supporters/institutions.
Organizational leadership, operations, and events : COS operational staff will ensure the efficient execution of the grant, organizational policies, finances, HR, and hosting of events. Two person months of support per year are identified for the Director of Operations and accounting, grants administration, bookkeeper, and events support staff. Also, COS’s Executive Director will devote 2 person months to supporting internal product vision, strategy, and execution and external community engagement and collaboration.
Hosting : Hosting costs are expected to grow during the five year project period. There is potential for substantial variability in hosting costs depending on the extent to which authors attach data to preprints. We generated two total cost estimates: (1) 5mb (0.0049gB) average per preprint - assumes occasional storage beyond the preprint, and (2) 0.19gB average per preprint - current average OSF project size. Our proposed budget uses the smaller estimate applied to ASAPbio’s provided projections and can be revisited after year 1.
Screening : Estimates based on ASAPbio’s provided usage projections for Similarity Check through Crossref.
Service administration, support, helpdesk: Service administration will be supervised by a combination of the community and product team leads. The service administrators will be responsible for rapid review and support of The Commons user community. The budget anticipates yearly growth in the staffing necessary for maintaining timely and efficient service administration beginning with 2 FTEs. Future needs will depend on rate of growth and effectiveness of automated screening tools.
Other direct expenses : Other direct expenses include computer purchases (8 per year assuming replacement once every 3 years), software licenses and internal data back-ups, 10 Salesforce licenses for the community, marketing, and funding teams, and 3 Desk.com licenses for the helpdesk.
Facilities and administrative expenses : Feedback from ASAPbio organizers suggested that there should be no F&A/indirect costs, and instead all costs itemized in the budget. The budget includes a portion of COS’s costs for organizational items including rent, parking, facilities maintenance, furniture, supplies, internet, operational services, legal consulting, depreciation, and accounting/payroll fees.