13  Sustainability

EIW’s workflows, documentation and training materials need to stay usable and accurate after project funding ends. This section sets out who looks after them, how often they are reviewed, and how responsibility is handed over when the project closes.

13.1 Custodians and Maintainers

Each workflow, documentation set and training resource will have:

  • an initial custodian: the organisation accountable for the asset;
  • at least one maintainer: the person or team who keeps it up to date.

Custodians are named as organisations rather than individuals, so accountability isn’t lost when staff change. Where possible, each asset has two maintainers, including volunteer maintainers from the user community.

Each asset is labelled Active, Maintenance only (fixes but no new features) or Archived (preserved but no longer updated).

13.2 Maintenance Cadence

  • Monthly: check that links and identifiers still work, and respond to reported issues.
  • Quarterly: apply software updates, and test that the example workflows still run.
  • At each release: update the documentation.
  • Annually:
    • review the documentation and training materials;
    • confirm each asset’s status (Active, Maintenance only or Archived);
  • review this plan.
  • An extra review is triggered by major software changes, platform changes, or 12 months without any maintenance activity on an asset.

13.3 Governance Handover at Project Close

A Transition Plan will be timely prepared before funding ends (e.g. last quarter of funding period), for approval by the governance group.

The Transition Plan will:

  • confirm a successor custodian for each asset that stays in use, by written agreement;
  • transfer platform accounts (GitHub, Zenodo, EcoCommons and similar) to institutional ownership rather than personal accounts;
  • archive assets without a successor, with permanent identifiers so they can still be found and cited;
  • deposit a final record of all project identifiers and hand it over to successor organisation, if relevant.

After the project closes, the successor organisation or community steering group carries out an annual review.