scholarly journals Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): design and first-year review

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. e147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arfon M. Smith ◽  
Kyle E. Niemeyer ◽  
Daniel S. Katz ◽  
Lorena A. Barba ◽  
George Githinji ◽  
...  

This article describes the motivation, design, and progress of the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS). JOSS is a free and open-access journal that publishes articles describing research software. It has the dual goals of improving the quality of the software submitted and providing a mechanism for research software developers to receive credit. While designed to work within the current merit system of science, JOSS addresses the dearth of rewards for key contributions to science made in the form of software. JOSS publishes articles that encapsulate scholarship contained in the software itself, and its rigorous peer review targets the software components: functionality, documentation, tests, continuous integration, and the license. A JOSS article contains an abstract describing the purpose and functionality of the software, references, and a link to the software archive. The article is the entry point of a JOSS submission, which encompasses the full set of software artifacts. Submission and review proceed in the open, on GitHub. Editors, reviewers, and authors work collaboratively and openly. Unlike other journals, JOSS does not reject articles requiring major revision; while not yet accepted, articles remain visible and under review until the authors make adequate changes (or withdraw, if unable to meet requirements). Once an article is accepted, JOSS gives it a digital object identifier (DOI), deposits its metadata in Crossref, and the article can begin collecting citations on indexers like Google Scholar and other services. Authors retain copyright of their JOSS article, releasing it under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. In its first year, starting in May 2016, JOSS published 111 articles, with more than 40 additional articles under review. JOSS is a sponsored project of the nonprofit organization NumFOCUS and is an affiliate of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorena A. Barba ◽  
Juanjo Bazán ◽  
Jed Brown ◽  
Roman Valls Guimera ◽  
Melissa Gymrek ◽  
...  

A recent editorial in Nature Methods, “Giving Software its Due”, described challenges related to the development of research software and highlighted, in particular, the challenge of software publication and citation. Here, we call attention to a system that we have developed that enables community-driven software review, publication, and citation: The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is an open-source project and an open access journal that provides a light-weight publishing process for research software. Focused on and based in open platforms and on a community of contributors, JOSS evidently satisfies a pressing need, having already published more than 500 articles in approximately three years of existence.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Fenner

The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is a developer friendly, open access journal for research software packages published as open source software. JOSS started publishing in 2016, and has published more than 1,500 articles so far. ...


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5690
Author(s):  
Mamdouh Alenezi

The evolution of software is necessary for the success of software systems. Studying the evolution of software and understanding it is a vocal topic of study in software engineering. One of the primary concepts of software evolution is that the internal quality of a software system declines when it evolves. In this paper, the method of evolution of the internal quality of object-oriented open-source software systems has been examined by applying a software metric approach. More specifically, we analyze how software systems evolve over versions regarding size and the relationship between size and different internal quality metrics. The results and observations of this research include: (i) there is a significant difference between different systems concerning the LOC variable (ii) there is a significant correlation between all pairwise comparisons of internal quality metrics, and (iii) the effect of complexity and inheritance on the LOC was positive and significant, while the effect of Coupling and Cohesion was not significant.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zilia Iskoujina ◽  
Joanne Roberts

Purpose – This paper aims to add to the understanding of knowledge sharing in online communities through an investigation of the relationship between individual participant’s motivations and management in open source software (OSS) communities. Drawing on a review of literature concerning knowledge sharing in organisations, the factors that motivate participants to share their knowledge in OSS communities, and the management of such communities, it is hypothesised that the quality of management influences the extent to which the motivations of members actually result in knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach – To test the hypothesis, quantitative data were collected through an online questionnaire survey of OSS web developers with the aim of gathering respondents’ opinions concerning knowledge sharing, motivations to share knowledge and satisfaction with the management of OSS projects. Factor analysis, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis were used to explore the survey data. Findings – The analysis of the data reveals that the individual participant’s satisfaction with the management of an OSS project is an important factor influencing the extent of their personal contribution to a community. Originality/value – Little attention has been devoted to understanding the impact of management in OSS communities. Focused on OSS developers specialising in web development, the findings of this paper offer an important original contribution to understanding the connections between individual members’ satisfaction with management and their motivations to contribute to an OSS project. The findings reveal that motivations to share knowledge in online communities are influenced by the quality of management. Consequently, the findings suggest that appropriate management can enhance knowledge sharing in OSS projects and online communities, and organisations more generally.


Author(s):  
Zulaima Chiquin ◽  
Kenyer Domínguez ◽  
Luis E. Mendoza ◽  
Edumilis Méndez

This chapter presents a Model to Estimate the Human Factor Quality in Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Development, or EHFQ-FLOSS. The model consists of three dimensions: Levels (individual, community, and foundation), Aspects (internal or contextual), and Forms of Evaluation (self-evaluation, co-evaluation, and hetero-evaluation). Furthermore, this model provides 145 metrics applicable to all three levels, as well as an algorithm that guides their proper application to estimate the systemic quality of human resources involved in the development of FLOSS, guide the decision-making process, and take possible corrective actions.


Author(s):  
James M. Laffey ◽  
Matthew Schmidt ◽  
Christopher J. Amelung

Online learning in K-12 and higher education has been growing rapidly, and open source software has the potential to improve the quality of e-learning. This paper describes how FOSS enables turning e-learning from a potentially restrictive and narrow framing of the education experience to an emergent and social experience. The authors identify several key elements of the FOSS model that position open source initiatives to contribute to the emergent and social nature of experience in e-learning. The authors also describe several challenges to developing FOSS in a community of educators for e-learning. These elements and challenges are illustrated in a brief case report about the development of an open source software system called Context-aware Activity Notification System (CANS). CANS (http://cansaware.com) is a notification system that integrates with collaborative work and learning systems and is designed around the importance of awareness of user activity, a user’s social context and personal notification preferences.


Author(s):  
Kwei-Jay Lin ◽  
Yi-Hsuan Lin ◽  
Tung-Mei Ko

In this chapter, the authors present a novel perspective by using the Creative Commons (CC) licensing model to compare 10 commonly used OSS licenses. The authors also propose a license compatibility table to show that whether it is possible to combine OSS with CC-licensed open content in a creative work. By using the CC licensing concept to interpret OSS licenses, the authors hope that users can get a deeper understanding on the ideas and issues behind many of the OSS licenses. In addition, the authors hope that by means of this table, users can make a better decision on the license selection while combining open source with CC-licensed works.


Author(s):  
Kevin Carillo ◽  
Chitu Okoli

Open source software (OSS) development has continued to appear as a puzzling and enigmatic phenomenon and has drawn increasing attention as its importance has grown. Relying upon an alternative way to develop and to distribute software, open source communities have been able to challenge and often outperform proprietary software by enabling better reliability, lower costs, shorter development times, and a higher quality of code (Raymond, 2004). Behind the software is a mass of people working together in loose coordination, even portrayed as a rowdy marketplace (Raymond, 2001, p. 1): No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here—rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches … out of which a coherent and stable system seemingly emerges only by a succession of miracles. More precisely, the people behind open source projects have been defined as: “Internet-based communities of software developers who voluntarily collaborate in order to develop software that they or their organizations need” (von Krogh, 2003, p. 14). In contrast to the sacred cathedral-like software development model that gave birth to most commercial and proprietary systems, such bazaar-like communities seem to have based their success on a pseudo-anarchic type of collaboration and developers’ interaction (Raymond, 2001). However, in spite of the apparent disorganization of these bazaars, a closer look distinguishes common values and norms that rule them, specific roles that can be identified, similar motives shared by people, and practices that follow patterns. This article highlights key aspects of what forms the communities that support these projects.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mamdouh Alenezi ◽  
Fakhry Khellah

Software systems usually evolve constantly, which requires constant development and maintenance. Subsequently, the architecture of these systems tends to degrade with time. Therefore, stability is a key measure for evaluating an architecture. Open-source software systems are becoming progressively vital these days. Since open-source software systems are usually developed in a different management style, the quality of their architectures needs to be studied. ISO/IEC SQuaRe quality standard characterized stability as one of the sub-characteristics of maintainability. Unstable software architecture could cause the software to require high maintenance cost and effort. In this work, the authors propose a simple, yet efficient, technique that is based on carefully aggregating the package level stability in order to measure the change in the architecture level stability as the architecture evolution happens. The proposed method can be used to further study the cause behind the positive or negative architecture stability changes.


Metabolites ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Álvaro Fernández-Ochoa ◽  
Rosa Quirantes-Piné ◽  
Isabel Borrás-Linares ◽  
María de la Luz Cádiz-Gurrea ◽  
Marta E. Alarcón Riquelme ◽  
...  

Data pre-processing of the LC-MS data is a critical step in untargeted metabolomics studies in order to achieve correct biological interpretations. Several tools have been developed for pre-processing, and these can be classified into either commercial or open source software. This case report aims to compare two specific methodologies, Agilent Profinder vs. R pipeline, for a metabolomic study with a large number of samples. Specifically, 369 plasma samples were analyzed by HPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS. The collected data were pre-processed by both methodologies and later evaluated by several parameters (number of peaks, degree of missingness, quality of the peaks, degree of misalignments, and robustness in multivariate models). The vendor software was characterized by ease of use, friendly interface and good quality of the graphs. The open source methodology could more effectively correct the drifts due to between and within batch effects. In addition, the evaluated statistical methods achieved better classification results with higher parsimony for the open source methodology, indicating higher data quality. Although both methodologies have strengths and weaknesses, the open source methodology seems to be more appropriate for studies with a large number of samples mainly due to its higher capacity and versatility that allows combining different packages, functions, and methods in a single environment.


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