Required Roles

There are three primary roles that a person may take when contributing to the Connexions system: Author, Maintainer, and Copyright Holder. The usual case is that the same person or people will fill all three roles for a given module or course/collection, but that is not required. You may take any combination of roles on a given module or course/collection, and an entirely different set on another work.

Author

Users listed as authors receive credit for writing the material. The author is the one who is responsible for the creation of the work, but may or may not be the one who actually enters work into the Connexions.

Maintainer

Only users listed as maintainers have permission to submit successive versions of a module or course/collection. Once a module is published, changes to roles take effect only after the module or collection is republished.

Most authors will probably serve as maintainers for their materials, but some may choose not to. Authors may appoint additional maintainers to assist them in updating their materials.

Copyright Holder

Users listed as copyright holders have the legal right to license the materials. In most cases, the copyright holder is the same person as the author, but this may not be the case in some institutions where faculty and employees are required to sign over copyright to the institution. In this case the institution serves as copyright holder and the individual retains the author and/or maintainer roles.

When you grant or update roles for a collaborator in a module or course/collection in a workgroup, these changes do not take effect until that person accepts the role change and you publish the material. The prospective collaborator must accept the role because Connexions provides its account holders with the ability to accept or reject a role in another person's module or course/collection. If there are any pending roles (roles not yet accepted or rejected) for a module or course/collection, Connexions will not let you publish that material. Once the collaborator accepts the role or updated role, you must publish the material for Connexions to recognize the collaborator. Connexions looks to the information in published modules and courses/collections to see who is an author, maintainer, or copyright holder for the material.

Optional Roles

There are two optional roles for Connexions material: Editor and Translator.

Editor

Users listed as editors receive credit for editing a module. Editing duties may include checking the material for accuracy, grammar, spelling, organization, and so on. If an editor will be publishing versions of the material, they should be sure to have the "maintainer" role in addition. Editors are listed with the other roles under the "More about this content" link that appears at the end of the module.

Translator

Users listed as translators have taken an existing module and translated it from one language into another. If a translator will be publishing versions of the material, they should be sure to have the "maintainer" role in addition. Translators of a course/collection have translated headings and summary content into another language. Translators are listed wherever Authors are listed.