Background
In the past 10 years, the Eclipse framework has been recognized for being successfully used and deployed in the IT departments of many enterprises and software companies. However, during the same period of time Eclipse technology has been used to build applications for science, ranging from biology to life sciences, physics and other academic applications and large-scale labratories such as CERN, DESY and Diamond Light Source.
In 2012, a small group of scientists that were heavily involved in Eclipse technology as well as in the Eclipse community started an effort to bring together the science communities to learn about the different applications and components build in or with Eclipse. This lead to the vision that the organizations can share the effort of building components and re-use components that others have built. At EclipseCon Europe 2013 at a “Science Workshop” the decision was made to create the Eclipse Science Working Group.
Vision and goals
The Eclipse Foundation is a place where people collaborate to deliver exemplary, extensible tools, frameworks and runtime components. The Science Working Group aims at defining an open development environment and key runtimes for science components that will enable open and commercial solutions. The following list describes the areas of work that the group will initially work on:
 1.	Data description / definition 
 2.	Plotting, including 1D, 2D and 3D data.
 3.	Workflow algorithms and their visualization
Governance and Precedence
All Science Working Group members must be parties to the Eclipse Membership Agreement, including the requirement set forth in Section 2.2 to follow the Bylaws and then-current policies of the Eclipse Foundation.
Online voting using a technology like doodle will be used as a mechanism for the steering committee to make decisions. A vote may be organized by any member. Each committer (or active contributor such as tester) may vote in the poll. A vote is a way of gauging preference of active members of the group, as such it is non-binding.
In the event of any conflict between the terms set forth in this Science Working Group Charter and the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws, Membership Agreement, Eclipse Development Process, Eclipse Working Group Process, or any policies of the Eclipse Foundation, the terms of the Eclipse Foundation Bylaws, Membership Agreement, process, or policy shall take precedence.
Applicable documents
 �	Eclipse Bylaws
 �	Working Group Process
 �	Eclipse Membership Document
 �	Eclipse Development Process
Participation guidelines and membership
Steering committee members
Steering committee member are required to:
 �	Be a Strategic, Enterprise or Solutions member of the Eclipse Foundation
 �	Participate in the working group meetings and provide timely feedback on the working group documents.
 �	Provide resources to the programs of the working group (projects, marketing, outreach) as defined by the steering committee
 �	Provide announcement support for the official releases of the working group (specifications, software releases) and ongoing promotion to other actors in the domain
Participating members
Member participants are required to:
 �	Be an Eclipse Foundation member at Strategic, Enterprise or Solution level.
 �	Regularly participate in the Working Group meetings.