Prepare JOSS submission

[wleoncio]

Submission requirements

•  The software must be open source as per the OSI definition.
•  The software must be hosted at a location where users can open issues and propose code changes without manual approval of (or payment for) accounts.
•  The software must have an obvious research application.
•  You must be a major contributor to the software you are submitting, and have a GitHub account to participate in the review process.
•  Your paper must not focus on new research results accomplished with the software.
•  Your paper (paper.md and BibTeX files, plus any figures) must be hosted in a Git-based repository together with your software (although they may be in a short-lived branch which is never merged with the default).

In addition, the software associated with your submission must:

•  Be stored in a repository that can be cloned without registration.
•  Be stored in a repository that is browsable online without registration.
•  Have an issue tracker that is readable without registration.
•  Permit individuals to create issues/file tickets against your repository.
•  Make your software available in an open repository (GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.) and include an OSI approved open source license.

Typical paper submission flow

Before you submit, you should:

•  Make sure that the software complies with the JOSS review criteria. In particular, your software should be full-featured, well-documented, and contain procedures (such as automated tests) for checking correctness.
•  Write a short paper in Markdown format using paper.md as file name, including a title, summary, author names, affiliations, and key references. See our example paper to follow the correct format.
•  (Optional) create a metadata file describing your software and include it in your repository. We provide a script that automates the generation of this metadata.

Code of Conduct

•  I confirm that I read and will adhere to the JOSS code of conduct.

General checks

•  Repository: Is the source code for this software available at the repository url?
•  License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
•  Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author made major contributions to the software? Does the full list of paper authors seem appropriate and complete?

Functionality

•  Installation: Does installation proceed as outlined in the documentation?
•  Functionality: Have the functional claims of the software been confirmed?
•  Performance: If there are any performance claims of the software, have they been confirmed? (If there are no claims, please check off this item.)

Documentation

•  A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
•  Installation instructions: Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies? Ideally these should be handled with an automated package management solution.
•  Example usage: Do the authors include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).
•  Functionality documentation: Is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level (e.g., API method documentation)?
•  Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?
•  Community guidelines: Are there clear guidelines for third parties wishing to 1) Contribute to the software 2) Report issues or problems with the software 3) Seek support

Software paper

•  Summary: Has a clear description of the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience been provided?
•  A statement of need: Does the paper have a section titled ‘Statement of need’ that clearly states what problems the software is designed to solve, who the target audience is, and its relation to other work?
•  State of the field: Do the authors describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages?
•  Quality of writing: Is the paper well written (i.e., it does not require editing for structure, language, or writing quality)?
•  References: Is the list of references complete, and is everything cited appropriately that should be cited (e.g., papers, datasets, software)?
•  Do references in the text use the proper citation syntax?

[wleoncio]

As mentioned in #96 (comment), work on this is planned to start in early 2024, based on whatever version is on CRAN at the time.

[wleoncio]

#58 is moving fairly quickly, so we could wait for it to be closed before working on this.