Introducing JOSS: The Journal of Open Source Software

Talk presented at the 2017 Python in Science Conference (SciPy), on 13 July 2017 in Austin, TX.<div><br></div><div><b>Abstract</b></div><div>This talk describes the motivation and progress of the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS), a free, open-access journal designed to publish brief articles about research software. The primary purpose of JOSS is to enable developers of research software to receive citation credit equivalent to typical archival publications. 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; articles not yet accepted remain visible and under review until the authors make appropriate changes for acceptance—unlike other journals, articles requiring major revision are not rejected. JOSS published 111 articles in its first year (May 2016–2016), with >50 articles under review.<br>