OLS Obligations

OLS will support all mentors throughout their mentorship period, providing both guidance and technical support.

Mentor Obligations

During the application period

  • Mentors will communicate with applicants and help them create relevant proposals.
  • CC any co-mentors when responding to communication from contributors via email.

During contributor selection

  • Mentors will discuss with their co-mentor to identify promising contributors.
  • Be aware that there are often more good contributors than there are slots the organisation can support. This means we may not be able to take on your favourite contributor.

During the community bonding and coding phases

Mentors should:

  • Make sure they speak to their contributor at least weekly.
  • Inform the organisation administrators if any issues arise, or seem likely to arise, including:
    • Mentor is unable to continue mentoring or experiencing too high workload.
    • contributor is under performing or non responsive.
  • Complete all evaluations as early as possible in agreement with their co-mentor and encourage contributors to complete them early as well.
  • Coordinate vacation and out-of-office periods to ensure at least one mentor is available to respond to their contributor at all times. If both mentors are likely to be unavailable at the same time, please speak to an organisation administrator to arrange backup. This is particularly important around evaluation periods!

GSoC Funds

What OLS receives

Assuming the payment terms are the same as previous years, Google pays OLS $500 USD per accepted contributor. These funds are disbursed after the project is completed, so September or October, after which OLS takes time to process them.

What OLS will spend the money on

Contributor & Mentor Gifts

OLS will send gifts to all OLS mentors and GSoC contributors who pass their evaluations. It is also possible a small amount of this funding will be allocated to contributors who were not accepted as GSoC contributors but worked for OLS anyway. This year’s gifts will be decided upon as a group amongst the mentors and as such the nature and ultimate cost of this expense may change.

Mentor Summit Places

If the mentor summit is in-person, at least one mentor summit place will be reserved for an org admin. Other mentors are welcome to apply as well.

Mentor Stipends

After the funds have been disbursed as detailed above, remaining funds will be distributed evenly amongst all mentors who mentored at least one contributor.

Please note these terms are subject to change without notice at the discretion of the OLS team.

What to do if there is a problem

Please contact an organisation administrator. In the first instance, this is Yo Yehudi - yo@openlifesci.org. If Yo is non-responsive, or your issue is with Yo, please speak to [ADD SECOND CONTACT]