Hi. Dan Grayson sent Greg and me a message letting us know about this discussion and I thought it might be helpful for if I joined the discussion as one of the managing editors.
We had a long discussion, as Mike Hansen mentioned, about how to proceed. Our idea is that this journal will eventually contain code and be a refereed mechanism for developers from all the major open source algebra and geometry software systems (Sage, Singular, CoCoA, Gap, Macaulay2, to name just a few). However, at the time of this discussion, the only people present were Macaulay 2 programmers and users, as William pointed out. Not knowing how the community would respond, or how much others would want to be involved, we decided to launch the journal for Macaulay 2 initially and as interest and success grew, we would expand it. In launching it for M2 we tried to do it in such a way that it could be easily expanded to other systems if the interest arose. This explains why the web page, copyrights, etc. do not indicate the M2 side of things specifically. We toiled long and hard over the title of the journal. We agree with you (and others who have written us) that the ideal title of the journal is Journal of Software for Algebra and Geometry. However, since the initial editorial staff does not reflect other systems we felt that the title should reflect that, at least initially, we are looking for Macaulay2 packages. We also debated (maybe you all have some good ideas about this) whether or not it would be helpful to have web pages, or titles indicating which program the software is for. It is also unclear to us as M2 programmers, who do not program for other systems, that the paper/package system we have set up for Macaulay 2, and that we think will work well for this sort of thing in relationship to Macaulay 2, is exactly the right setup for other programs. The acronym is due to needing a domain name and jsag.org (no dash), which is simply the initials of the journal, was already taken. Of course, it may be the case that SAGE could benefit from the three letter coincidence as we move forward - you never know. :) I hope that your community will consider being part of this journal and we can reform the web page and announcement, discuss editors, etc. for making this journal at least M2 and SAGE right away, if you are all interested. Or we are happy to perform the experiment with M2, and once we have a system/success we would be happy to expand at that point as well. I'm delighted that the journal has generated so much discussion. Best, Amelia On Sep 24, 12:22 pm, iSAGE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The small font copyright notice at the bottom of their webpage only > says "© Copyright 2008. Journal of Software for Algebra and Geometry. > All rights reserved. " that is, without the "Macaulay 2". > > Bhalchandra Thatte > thatte stats ox ac uk > > On Sep 24, 5:49 pm, "Mike Hansen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hello, > > > On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:08 AM, William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:04 AM, John Cremona <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> What exactly is the relationship between that journal and Macaulay 2? > > > > I _speculate_ that the relationship is that all the editors are also > > > the authors or big users of M2, and that all code that accompanies the > > > journal articles is supposed to be in M2. > > > Having been at a M2 workshop where this was discussed, I think I can > > provide some insight. All of the editors are indeed authors / big > > users of M2. They wanted a venue where they could have a refereeing / > > publishing system for their code and short articles about the code. > > > That being said, I think their long term vision is to have something > > bigger so that other related journals would be able to be under the > > same umbrella. The name "The Journal of Software for Algebra and > > Geometry: Macaulay 2" even suggests doing something like "The Journal > > of Software for Algebra and Geometry: Sage" or just having everything > > under "The Journal of Software for Algebra and Geometry". The main > > thing would be getting editors and referees (as well as papers/code!) > > on our side. > > > I think that it's good that someone is stepping up and doing this at > > some level since it's definitely something that people have been > > asking for for awhile. > > > --Mike --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
