Expert Consensus on an Open-Textbook for Theory Development Methodology

Delphi Project Repository

ECTO will become an open, community-maintained textbook and reference work on theory development (primarily in psychology and the broader behavioural and social sciences).

This GitHub repository is not (yet) the textbook itself.
At this stage, the repository is dedicated to documenting and coordinating the development process of ECTO — in particular, the design, setup, and execution of an expert-elicitation (Delphi-style) project to determine the scope, structure, content priorities, and quality criteria of the future textbook.

In other words: this repo is the “meta-project”: how we build ECTO.
Only later will the actual textbook content be published here (or in a closely linked repository).

Zenodo is used as an archival layer for immutable, DOI-minted releases of this development workflow and its public outputs.

Quick links

• Website (GitHub Pages): https://nnnvd.github.io/ECTO/
• Repository: https://github.com/NNNvD/ECTO
• Zenodo concept DOI (all versions): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18760330
• Latest Zenodo version DOI (V1.0.0): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18982252

What is ECTO (the eventual output)?

ECTO aims to make theory development more cumulative and teachable. In many research areas, theoretical ideas remain underspecified: key constructs are ambiguous, assumptions are implicit, measurement links are unclear, and competing interpretations can be hard to adjudicate.

The future ECTO textbook will curate methods, templates, examples, and workflows for turning theoretical ideas into explicit specifications that can be:

• Precisely stated (constructs, assumptions, scope conditions)
• Represented as mechanism or process descriptions (qualitative and/or formal)
• Linked to measurement and data (what would count as evidence, and how)
• Used to derive discriminating predictions and crucial tests
• Iteratively improved based on empirical and conceptual feedback

What this repository is for (current scope)

This repository is intentionally structured to support the development of ECTO with an emphasis on transparancy and real-time availability of material. Concretely, this repo hosts:

1. Delphi project documentation
   • Protocols and workflow documentation (how the Delphi is run)
   • Inclusion/exclusion criteria for experts and materials
   • Recruitment materials, invitation templates, consent language (public-facing versions)
   • Round structure, timelines, and decision rules
   • Versioned change logs and rationales (why design decisions were made)
2. Public instruments and materials
   • Survey instruments (items, rubrics, rating scales, codebooks)
   • Guidance documents for participants (instructions, definitions, examples)
   • Public templates for summarizing or coding responses
   • Anonymized or aggregated outputs intended for public release (see constraints below)
3. Open collaboration and issue tracking
   • Issues and pull requests are the primary mechanisms for proposing changes
   • Discussions about scope, structure, and methodological choices
   • Tasks for building, validating, and improving project materials
4. Citable, immutable releases (Zenodo)
   • When a GitHub Release is created, Zenodo archives a snapshot of the repository and mints a DOI.
   • These DOIs are intended to cite public versions of the Delphi protocol and outputs (not private/raw responses).

What this repository is not for (yet)

• It is not yet the canonical repository for the full textbook content.
• It should not be used as the main home for draft chapters intended as publishable textbook chapters.
• If early chapter drafting happens during development, it should be clearly marked as provisional, non-canonical, and subject to Delphi outcomes (or placed in a separate repo).

Non-goals and constraints (important)

To keep the repository durable, legally safe, and ethically compliant, it will (must) not contain:

• Sensitive or confidential data, including any non-public participant information
• Raw Delphi responses that could compromise anonymity or were not explicitly consented for public release
• Personal data (names/emails/affiliations) unless explicitly intended for publication
• Copyright-restricted PDFs or other materials without distribution rights
• Large binary files that do not need to be versioned with the source

License

Unless stated otherwise: documentation, protocols, and other text materials are licensed under CC BY 4.0. Code (scripts, automation, tooling) is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE-CONTENT and LICENSE-CODE.

Funding

This is a project of The next step in methodological innovation: Open and collaborative theory development with file number VI.Veni.231G.093 of the research programme Veni SGW, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).