[SciPy-dev] Online SciPy Journal

[David Cournapeau]

Travis Oliphant wrote:
> As most of you know, I'm at an academic institution and have a strong 
> belief that open source should mesh better with the academic world then 
> it currently does.  One of the problems, is that it is not easy to just 
> point to open source software as a "publication" which is one of the 
> areas that most tenure-granting boards look at when deciding on a 
> candidate.
>
> To help with that a little-bit,  I'd really like to get a peer-reviewed 
> on-line journal for code contributed to SciPy started.  Not to implicate 
> him if he no longer thinks it's a good idea, but I first started 
> thinking seriously about this at SciPy 2006 when Fernando Perez 
> mentioned he had seen this model with a math-related software package 
> and thought we could try something similar.
>
> Exactly what form that will take is worth some discussion.  Most 
> "publications" are viewed highly because they are "peer-reviewed".   It 
> seems to me, that we have all the makings of a community that could 
> peer-review code contributed to SciPy.  I'd like to see two parts to 
> "the journal" (maybe they are separate).  One is the code itself.  Not 
> all of the code currently in SciPy is "journal" quality (I look no 
> further than many of my own contributions...)
>   
I like the peer-review idea for contributing code. I am kind of new in 
the academic research environment (just started my PhD a few months 
ago), so I am not very familiar with some of the constraints of a 
journal (that is quality requirement, expectation on the scientific 
level, etc...). Reading other responses to this email, I will take a 
look at mentioned publications.

So as much as I am not 'experienced enough' on the whole academic 
publication thing, I like it.
> 1) Do you like the idea ?
>   
+1
> 2) Could you help (i.e. as an editor, reviewer, etc.)? 
>   
+1 if I can help (What would be the requirements to be a reviewer, etc... ?)

David