#6059. Being a Mentor in open source projects

July 2026publication date
Proposal available till 29-05-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

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Journal’s subject area:
Computer Science Applications;
Computer Networks and Communications;
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More details about the manuscript: Science Citation Index Expanded or/and Social Sciences Citation Index
Abstract:
Mentoring is a well-known way to help newcomers to Open Source Software (OSS) projects overcome initial contribution barriers. Through mentoring, newcomers learn to acquire essential technical, social, and organizational skills. Despite the importance of OSS mentors, they are understudied in the literature. Understanding who OSS project mentors are, the challenges they face, and the strategies they use can help OSS projects better support mentors’ work. In this paper, we employ a two-stage study to comprehensively investigate mentors in OSS. First, we identify the characteristics of mentors in the Apache Software Foundation, a large OSS community, using an online survey. Second, through interviews with OSS mentors (n=18), we identify the challenges that mentors face and how they mitigate them.
Keywords:
Challenges; Mentors; Onboarding; OSS; Software engineering; Task recommendation

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