SIAM CSE 2019 Minisymposterium: The Journal of Open Source Software

This poster describes the 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 short and required to include a summary describing the purpose and high-level functionality of the software (written for a diverse, non-specialist audience), a statement of need, authors and their affiliations, and key references, as well as link to an archived version of the software (e.g., DOI obtained from Zenodo).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 the article and software, 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. JOSS was founded in May 2016, and in its first year published 111 articles in a variety of fields. Since then, JOSS has published over 494 articles (as of 23 Feb 2019), and submissions continue to grow.