Declaration of interest: I am the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Research Software, a journal which published "software metapapers" which are similar to the Elsevier "Original Software Publication" idea. I also maintain a list of journals which accept papers about scientific software: bitly.com/softwarejournals
I'm glad to see another set of journals tackle the approach of publishing software papers where the emphasis is on a metadata framework which aids reusability. I've compared the metadata and process for the OSP's and papers in JORS and they're broadly similar, including the ability to do revised versions and the quality of documentation and accessibility of the software. The one thing that I'm not sure about is the cloning of code into a journal-specific GitHub repository (e.g. https://github.com/ElsevierSoftwareX). If the software is already being developed on GitHub, it seems to me that it doesn't add anything either in terms of preservation (why not just point to the original GitHub repo?), or in terms of improving community (you've effectively made it difficult to understand which is the canonical repository for non-GitHub savvy readers). It might also be the case that it's harder for the developers as in some cases, issues might be raised against the SoftwareX repository, but they aren't easily transferred to the main repository (although I guess if the project is already on GitHub, that's not so much of an issue). The more I think about it, the more I think it's not as useful as persuading each contributing author to ensure they follow basic guidelines for storing and sharing software. Perhaps having a copy stored in a preservation repository (e.g. Zenodo, FigShare etc) would make more sense, or perhaps simply creating a specific tag in the original repository for the version associated with the OSP. Then again, others I have talked to like this approach, so I may be in the minority. I've talked to the SoftwareX editors previously, and I think we agree that actually the tricky thing here is providing the right tools to make reviewing software easier, and that's something where publishers can certainly make improvements. This has been an issue for the data papers community previously, and there's some good work on these problems by the PREPARDE project (http://proj.badc.rl.ac.uk/preparde/blog) Best regards, Neil On 23 July 2015 at 17:32, Robert M. Flight <[email protected]> wrote: > It is too bad that the first trial of this didn't really take off. The "Open > Research and Computation" journal started in 2010, but had to be folded into > Source Code for Biology and Medicine due to lack of interest. > > http://cameronneylon.net/blog/open-research-computation-an-ordinary-journal-with-extraordinary-aims/ > and > http://www.scfbm.org/content/7/1/2 > > Will be interesting to see what happens with this entry from Elsevier. > > -Robert > > On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 12:24 PM Morgan Taschuk <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> And is open access! Amazing for Elsevier! >> >> -- >> Morgan Taschuk >> Senior Manager, Genome Sequence Informatics >> >> Tel: 647-260-6486 >> Toll-free: 1-866-678-6427 >> Twitter: @morgantaschuk >> ________________________________________ >> From: Discuss [[email protected]] on behalf of >> Justin Kitzes [[email protected]] >> Sent: July 23, 2015 12:15 PM >> To: Software Carpentry Discussion >> Subject: Re: [Discuss] Elsevier "Software Track" >> >> Also see Elsevier's new journal SoftwareX, which publishes in this >> Original Software Publication format but takes submissions from all fields - >> >> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/softwarex/ >> >> Justin >> >> >> On Jul 23, 2015, at 7:27 AM, Jan Kim <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > Dear All, >> > >> > I've just learned this new "Original Software" publication format >> > that Elsevier announce [1]. Their review criteria (see [2]) include >> > reproducibility and other features that also play an important role >> > in SWC -- so I hope you find this interesting / relevant, and of >> > course I'd be interested in what you think of this new format. >> > >> > Best regards, Jan >> > >> > [1] >> > http://communications.elsevier.com/nl/jsp/m.jsp?c=%40NuByWEwUh6gfyFBU%2BI9w0PA3WMtUlfOTmnhZcQmujzI%3D >> > [2] >> > http://www.journals.elsevier.com/science-of-computer-programming/call-for-software/a-new-software-track-on-original-software-publications-scico/ >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Discuss mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > >> > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discuss mailing list >> [email protected] >> >> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org -- Neil Chue Hong Director, Software Sustainability Institute EPCC, University of Edinburgh, JCMB, Edinburgh, EH9 3FD, UK Tel: +44 (0)131 650 5957 http://www.software.ac.uk/ LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/neilchuehong Twitter: http://twitter.com/npch ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8876-7606 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
