Description
This talk 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. 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 87 papers as of March 2017, with an additional 38 currently under review.