HICDEP Release Process

The HICDEP document is updated at least annually. Suggested changes are collected in the discussion forum or via email to hicdep.rigshospitalet(at)regionh.dk. All suggested changes are discussed and approved by common consent by the HICDEP Committee in a virtual annual session. The session will be open to all contributors.

You are encouraged to use the most recent stable version and discuss changes to the draft version at all times.

Before a new version is released (marked stable) formally, it runs through the following procedure:

1. Four weeks before the annual meeting of the HICDEP Committee, a member of the HICDEP secretariat, currently maintaining the HICDEP standard, announces to the HICDEP Committee indicating that the current draft version is to be considered a release-candidate, highlighting the changes since the last stable version. The announcement is accompanied by a downloadable PDF of the release-candidate version.
2. All members of the HICDEP Committee forward this announcement to data managers and researchers who might have valuable feedback on the changes.
3. Within three weeks, everybody (including external parties) may comment and changes to the draft are still possible.
4. One week before the virtual meeting, the draft is frozen, and changes are no longer incorporated.
5. If the members of the HICDEP Committee accept the new version, a member of the HICDEP Committee performs the update and describes the differences from the last to the new stable version in the ChangeLog.