Journal of Open Source Software

Aims & Scope

JOSS publishes articles about research software. This definition includes software that: solves complex modeling problems in a scientific context (physics, mathematics, biology, medicine, social science, neuroscience, engineering); supports the functioning of research instruments or the execution of research experiments; extracts knowledge from large data sets; offers a mathematical library, or similar. While useful for many areas of research, pre-trained machine learning models and notebooks are not in-scope for JOSS. JOSS publishes articles about software that demonstrates clear research impact or credible scholarly significance. Your software should represent a meaningful contribution to the research community rather than being a one-off tool for a single analysis. We evaluate submissions based on evidence of research impact, intellectual contribution, and good open-source practices. Some factors that reviewers and editors consider include: Evidence of research impact: publications or analyses using the software, external adopters or integrations, or credible near-term significance demonstrated through benchmarks and reproducible materials. Design thinking: meaningful architectural decisions, trade-offs considered, and conceptual frameworks that capture domain expertise. We value work that builds upon existing software ecosystems rather than reinventing solutions. Open development practices: sustained development over time with evidence of collaborative effort, public development history, comprehensive testing, clear documentation, and pathways for community contribution. Whether the software is sufficiently useful that it is likely to be cited by other researchers in your domain. In addition, JOSS requires that software should be feature-complete (i.e., no half-baked solutions) and designed for maintainable extension (not one-off modifications of existing tools). "Minor utility" packages, including "thin" API clients, and single-function packages are not acceptable. Projects developed privately are not eligible until there is a public record of open development: at least six months of public history prior to submission, with evidence of releases, public issues/pull requests. A history of contributions and engagement from individuals beyond the original team, across organisations, is especially welcome, though not essential. Many web-based research tools are out of scope for JOSS due to a lack of modularity and challenges testing and maintaining the code. Web-based tools may be considered 'in scope' for JOSS, provided that they meet one or both of the following criteria: 1) they are built around and expose a 'core library' through a web-based experience (e.g., R/ Shiny applications) or 2) the web application demonstrates a high-level of rigor with respect to domain modeling and testing (e.g., adopts and implements a design pattern such as MVC using a framework such as Django ). JOSS submissions must: Be open source (i.e., have an OSI-approved license ). Have an obvious research application. Be feature-complete (no half-baked solutions) and be designed for maintainable extension (not one-off modifications). Minor 'utility' packages, including 'thin' API clients, and single-function packages are not acceptable.

Based on the Think.Check.Submit framework by DOAJ, COPE & OASPA. All data from verified open sources.

Subject Classification