Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) Proposal
Start Date
JOSS was launched May 2016. We would like to pursue OSI affiliate membership from September 2016 onward.
Initial Members
- Incubator Project Chair: Kevin Mattheus Moerman (kmoerman(a)mit(dot)edu)
- Incubator Project Sponsor: Stefano Zacchiroli
- OSI General Manager: Patrick Masson
- Other Contributors:
Resources Needed
(mailing list, virtual server, budget, etc.)
Advice on open source licensing for research software works submitted in JOSS.
The OSI may play a role in arranging website hosting for the JOSS website (joss.theoj.org).
JOSS does not charge authors a publication fee and all content is made available for free. To cover operational costs (which includes website hosting, CrossRef membership, DOI assignment) JOSS seeks fiscal sponsorship. As a non-profit organisation, the OSI may play a role in receiving donations for JOSS to enable fiscal sponsorship.
Deliverable(s)
As an academic journal for open source research software JOSS is promoting the decimation and sharing of open source research code. By assigning publications and digital object identifiers (DOIs), scientific research software becomes citable and academics receive the credit for their work similar to other scientific publications. All accepted JOSS submissions are required to carry an OSI approved software license. All accepted papers, and associated software, are made available for free online (software carries an OSI approved license, the paper is provided as CC-BY 4.0). JOSS operates on a continuous basis, and currently publishes 4 software papers per month. Annual reports will be provided to the OSI listing all JOSS developments and the accepted publications.
Description
The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is an open source developer-friendly journal for research software packages. JOSS has a (GitHub based) formal peer review process that is designed to improve the quality of the software submitted. Upon acceptance into JOSS, a CrossRef DOI is minted and we list your paper on the JOSS website. The JOSS "paper" is deliberately extremely short and only allowed to include: 1) A short abstract describing the high-level functionality of the software (and perhaps a figure), 2) A list of the authors of the software (together with their affiliations), 2) A list of key references including a link to the software archive. Papers are not allowed to include other things such as descriptions of API functionality, as this should be included in the software documentation. JOSS follows the OSI definition of open source and all submissions are required to carry an OSI approved license. Copyright of JOSS papers is retained by submitting authors and accepted papers are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Any code snippets included in JOSS papers are subject to the MIT license regardless of the license of the submitted software package under review. JOSS is a non-profit journal and does not charge authors a publication fee. The primary purpose of a JOSS paper is to enable citation credit to be given to authors of research software. By associating a paper and CrossRef DOI to the software academics are able to cite the software like any other academic research outcome. As such researchers are rewarded for sharing their open source software through sharing and publishing of their work with JOSS.
The goals of JOSS align well with the OSI mission statement since JOSS: 1) aims to stimulate the sharing of open source scientific research software, 2) enables peer reviewed publication of high quality open source software, 3) enables citation of such software like any other academic research outcome.
Target Completion Date
JOSS is an academic journal and operates on a continuous basis. JOSS publishes on average 4 papers per month. Annual reports will be provided listing all works published with JOSS.