Journal of Open Source Software: scope change

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JOSS has published today this announcement about their publication policy, following the development of AI coding:

Having read this recent post about FSML v0.1.0 published in JOSS, I was thinking about writing a paper about the ForColormap library we developed with @Ali. Reading attentively their announcement is important before starting such a work.

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Thanks for pointing out this announcement to the community, @vmagnin.

Most of the criteria in “What we’ll look for” is something that good software will fulfill regardless, so I don’t think there are any serious barriers added to publication. I only see an exception in the “development history” section for software coming from the academic world, because:

  • Many projects (Fortran in particular) have been created and maintained by a very small team or individuals (on rare permanent contracts) even if the software is used by many. (The academic systems and lack of infrastructure staff funding are to blame for that.)
  • I always got the impression that Fortran project development isn’t as much “out in the open”, because there hasn’t been a strong online community as there has been for other languages.

So the criteria in that section may be barriers for some academics wanting to open up their Fortran projects. Not a major ones, but they could delay publication.

On a different note, I’ve been keeping a keen eye on ForColormap for a while! :slight_smile:
The Fortran graphics and plotting ecosystem is still a little thin, so I’m excited about any project that adds to it.

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