Contributing Guidelines

Thank you for your interest in contributing to Introduction to Computer Science in Python: Principles and Practice.

This book is primarily a work of faculty from the Loyola University Chicago Computer Science department, developed to support our program in Computer Science. Although the material is general in nature, our first priority is to serve Loyola students and instructors.

What We Are Looking For

Our current effort is best suited to small, focused contributions. The topics in the book are introductory and are unlikely to be controversial, so our main interest is in identifying useful topics, subtopics, examples, explanations, figures, exercises, and corrections that may be missing or unclear.

Good contributions usually do one of the following:

• identify a missing topic or subtopic;

• clarify an explanation for beginning students;

• correct a technical error, typo, broken link, or formatting issue;

• improve an example without adding unnecessary complexity;

• suggest a small exercise, review question, or classroom activity;

• improve accessibility, readability, or consistency.

Please keep proposed changes focused. Large rewrites, broad restructuring, or major new chapters are harder for us to review and may be deferred even if the idea is useful.

Start With an Issue

For most contributors, we recommend starting with the issue tracker. This is especially appropriate if your day-to-day workflow does not involve plaintext writing, reStructuredText, Sphinx, and Git.

When opening an issue, please:

• describe the problem or suggestion clearly;

• point to the relevant chapter or section when possible;

• include proposed wording directly in the issue body if you have it;

• keep the issue focused on one topic;

• avoid attachments such as Word documents, PDFs, slide decks, or screenshots unless they are essential.

Plain text is easiest for us to review, quote, edit, and incorporate.

Pull Requests

Contributors who are comfortable with Git may submit a pull request.

Pull requests should:

• be small and focused;

• use the existing Sphinx/reStructuredText style of the book;

• put longer runnable Python examples in examples/introcs-python/<chapter>/ and include them with literalinclude;

• keep short teaching fragments inline with code-block:: python;

• preserve the book’s introductory level and avoid unnecessary complexity;

• include unit tests for longer code examples when practical, with pytest preferred;

• include source or attribution notes when adapting material from elsewhere;

• acknowledge any use of AI systems and briefly describe their role;

• avoid committing generated build output.

We may edit, reorganize, or rewrite accepted contributions so they fit the book’s voice, structure, and curricular goals.

Contributor Identity

For contributors whose work may be acknowledged in the book, we expect enough public identity information to support attribution and editorial review. This normally includes:

• a GitHub profile;

• a public institutional or personal web presence, such as a university, industry, national laboratory, or professional website;

• an ORCID, which is optional but strongly encouraged.

Use of AI Assistance

Contributors may use AI systems as part of their writing, editing, coding, or review workflow, but the use of AI must be acknowledged in the issue or pull request. The acknowledgment should briefly explain what the AI system helped with, such as brainstorming, drafting prose, rewriting examples, generating code, checking grammar, or summarizing source material.

We do not accept AI-only work. Every contribution must have a human contributor who can explain their own role, the role of any AI system, the origin of the material, and why the proposed change is appropriate for this book. Contributors are responsible for checking AI-assisted work for accuracy, originality, attribution, licensing compatibility, and suitability for beginning students.

Editorial Review and Licensing

All contributions are subject to editorial review by the lead editor, George K. Thiruvathukal. Submission of an issue, suggestion, or pull request does not guarantee acceptance.

By contributing, you agree that accepted contributions may be edited, rewritten, incorporated into the book, and released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Loyola University Chicago and the Computer Science faculty retain all rights necessary for continued distribution of the book and may use the materials in support of the department, including not-for-profit fundraising.

If you are contributing material that was previously published, developed for a course, or created with collaborators, please make sure you have the right to submit it and clearly identify any required attribution.

Code of Conduct

Participation in this project must follow the professional and community standards reflected in:

• the Python Software Foundation Code of Conduct;

• the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct;

• the IEEE Code of Conduct and IEEE Code of Ethics.

We will reject or close issues and pull requests that do not follow these guidelines. This includes abusive, discriminatory, harassing, hostile, or unprofessional communication, as well as submissions that fail to give proper credit for the work of others, including non-human assistance.

Questions

If you are unsure whether a contribution is a good fit, please open an issue with a short proposal before preparing a pull request.