[SciPy-user] Subject: Re: Scientific Python publications

[Stef Mientki]

Matthieu Brucher wrote:
>
>     As I said - the use of Matlab was necessary to include the code
>     for the
>     various descriptors introduced in the paper - unfortunately Scipy
>     code
>     would not have been accepted (I know this for a fact). The Python
>     software
>     used in this paper was much more complex than the Matlab
>     one-liners - I had
>     to process the recordings and do the calculations. Also, I had to
>     write a
>     speparate program to produce the animation. Of course this
>     software was not
>     converted to Matlab - just the mathematical expressions.
>
>
> In my field, the same problem arises with a Matlab toolbox, SPM. You 
> can't write an article without using this toolbox, especially if you 
> want to publish it in NeuroImage (the editor in chief is one of the 
> writter of the toolbox).
This is really SAD:
you're doing medical research, investigating and describing some 
physiological phenomena,
well I can assume they are interested what algorithm you used,
to verify your conclusions,
but it's absolutely absurd, they make it obligatory that you write your 
manuscript with a pen of a certain brand !!

It's even more absurd, if you realize
that in MatLab the algorithms are unknown,
so you can't verify them in case of weird results.
( I had a few a couple of years ago,
and the answer of MathWorks was "try to get a job at MathWorks" ;-)

But rethinking this attitude, maybe it's not absurd at all:
because there are unknown errors in MatLab,
they are unable to verify your results if you did the analysis in SciPy 
;-) ;-)

cheers,
Stef Mientki