The Journal of Open Source Software

Abstract

Poster presented at SIAM CSE17 PP108 Minisymposterium: Software Productivity and Sustainability for CSE and Data ScienceAbstract:This poster describes the motivation and progress of the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS), a free, open-access journal designed to publish brief papers about research software. The primary purpose of JOSS is to enable developers of research software to receive citation credit equivalent to typical archival publications. JOSS papers are deliberately extremely short, and are required to include a short abstract describing the purpose and functionality of the software, authors and their affiliations, and key references, as well as link to an archived version of the software (e.g., DOI obtained from Zenodo). Upon acceptance, papers receive a CrossRef DOI. Rather than a review of a lengthy software paper (including, e.g., methodology, validation, sample results), JOSS submissions undergo rigorous peer review of both the abstract and software itself, including documentation, tests, continuous integration, and licensing. The JOSS review process is modeled on the established approach of the rOpenSci collaboration. The entire submission and review process occurs openly on GitHub; papers not yet accepted remain visible and under review until the authors make appropriate changes for acceptance---unlike other journals, papers requiring major revision are not rejected. Since its public release in May 2016, JOSS has published 26 accepted papers as of September 2016, with an additional 20 submitted and under review.