Roles — NodeRail

Field Founder

For researchers, practitioners, and academics building or formalising a new field or discipline

A Field Founder creates and stewards a Field Node — the canonical home for a body of knowledge. The Founder sets the field's scope, constructs, evidence standards, ethics charter, and governance rules. In v0.1, all fields are founder-maintained, meaning the Founder is the primary steward of what counts as official content within their field.

What a Field Founder does

Publishes the Field Constitution — the canonical governance document
Defines the core constructs, scope, and evidence standards for the field
Maintains the field's registries of frameworks, measurements, and projects
Reviews and approves nodes that seek Official status within the field
Publishes the first nodes to establish the field's intellectual foundation

NodeRail's first Field Founder is Gao Kabubi, founder of Human Capacity Science (HCS).

Field Constitution Template

Contributor

For PhD students, researchers, practitioners, and students with intellectual work that deserves a permanent, citable home

A Contributor publishes nodes — Frameworks, Measurements, or Projects — linked to an existing field. Contributors extend the field's intellectual infrastructure without needing to create a new field from scratch. Every node a Contributor publishes is attributed to them permanently, with full lineage preserved.

What a Contributor does

Publishes Framework, Measurement, or Project Nodes under a field
Links their work to parent nodes using the lineage metadata schema
Fills in the Continuation Hook on Project Nodes so others can build forward
Forks or extends existing nodes with full attribution back to the origin
Proposes nodes for Official status within a field

No institutional affiliation is required. A student's dissertation and a professor's framework are evaluated by the same standard.

Submit your first node

Reader

For anyone who discovers, cites, or builds on intellectual work — no publishing required

A Reader discovers, cites, and extends work on NodeRail. Readers do not need to publish anything to get value from the platform. They can browse nodes, cite them in their own work, and use the lineage graph to trace the intellectual history of any idea.

What a Reader does

Discovers nodes through the field index, search, or direct links
Cites nodes using the "Cite as" block on each node
Forks or extends nodes, which transitions them to Contributor status
Evaluates the lineage of a node to understand its intellectual provenance

What is NodeRail?

Action	Role
Browse and cite nodes	Reader
Publish a Framework, Measurement, or Project Node	Contributor
Create and maintain a Field Constitution	Field Founder

Lineage and attribution across all roles

Regardless of role, every node on NodeRail carries the same lineage metadata. No matter who extends, forks, or adopts a node, the original contributor retains permanent, visible credit.

created_by

The person who originally created this node. Never changes, even after forks or transfers.

maintainer

The person currently responsible for maintaining the node. May differ from the original author.

lineage.parents

Node IDs this node directly extends or builds on. Establishes the intellectual chain.

lineage.adopted_from

External works such as papers or repositories that this node adapts or draws from.

lineage.forked_from

The node ID this was explicitly forked from. Preserves the fork relationship permanently.

lineage.children

Nodes that have extended this one. Populated over time as the field grows.

citation.cite_as

The human-readable citation string for this node. Displayed prominently on every node page.

citation.doi

The permanent Digital Object Identifier issued via Zenodo on the node's first stable release.

Three roles. One shared standard.