OpenMent: A Dataset of Mentor-Mentee Interactions in Google Summer of Code

Mentorship in Open Source Software (OSS) projects is crucial for reducing barriers to entry for newcomers and for fostering the technical and social integration of new contributors. While mentorship in OSS has been recognized as essential for sustainable project growth, quantitative research supporting qualitative findings is not common. To address this gap, we present OpenMent, a comprehensive dataset comprising over 500,000 issue comments, pull request comments, and commit messages from GitHub projects participating in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program. OpenMent is curated to capture role-specific interactions and communication patterns between mentors and mentees, providing information on the challenges and dynamics of OSS mentoring. This dataset is designed to be a reusable resource for the Software Engineering community, enabling researchers and practitioners to explore mentorship dynamics and investigate the impact of mentoring on contributor retention. By making OpenMent openly available, we aim to facilitate future research in OSS mentorship, fostering a deeper understanding of mentorship challenges, strategies, and contributions to the growth and inclusivity of OSS ecosystems.