I strongly disagree with rejecting paper for any other reasons than scientific ones. A paper describing software should properly describe the algorithms to ensure the reproducibility. The source should be available for inspection to ensure the program does what was claimed, for all I care this can be under the Ms-RSL license or just under good-old copyright. The program should preferably be available free for academic users, but if the paper is good you should be able to re-implement the tool if it is too expensive or doesn't exactly do what you want so it isn't entirely necessary. Making the software open source (in an OSS sense) does not solve any problems that a good description of the algorithms doesn't do well already. OSS does not guarantee long-term availability, a paper will like outlive the software repository. OSS licenses (not the BSD license) can be so restrictive that you end up having to re-implement the algorithms anyway. So not having an OSS license should not be a reason to reject the paper about the software.
Cheers, Robbie > -----Original Message----- > From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > James Stroud > Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 20:40 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] [RANT] Reject Papers describing non-open source > software > > On May 12, 2015, at 12:29 PM, Roger Rowlett <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Was the research publicly funded? If you receive funds from NSF, for example, > you are expected to share and "make widely available and usable" software > and inventions created under a grant (section VI.D.4. of the Award and > administration guide). I don't know how enforceable that clause is, however. > > The funding shouldn't matter. I suggest that a publication that has the purpose > of describing non-open source software should be summarily rejected by > referees. In other words, the power is in our hands, not the NSF's.
