How to Contribute to an Open Source Project Such as PlasmaPy

This presentation will describe how to contribute to an open source scientific software project, using PlasmaPy as an example. We will describe the necessary steps to contribute code, documentation, and tests using git and GitHub: forking and cloning a repository, creating a branch, and making a request for the upstream repository to pull in your change. The pull request then undergoes code review before being accepted. Contributions of new code generally also require documentation and tests. Finally, we will discuss ways to contribute an open source project besides code: by creating and using educational resources, participating in community discussions, organizing events, providing constructive code reviews, and supporting new members of the community as they make their first contributions.