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tags: proposals

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# Proposal to change [JOSS](https://joss.theoj.org/) from [JUFO 0 to JUFO 1](https://julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/publication-forum)

processing time: 2-5 months
ISSN: 2475-9066
Grounds: (max 1500 characters)

## points to highlight in the proposal
- JOSS improves reproducibility, reviewers have to actually check that software is well documented and easily installable, opposed to traditional journal.
- transparency: review process happens as an issue on github and is fully available
- JUFO 0 publication are not well seen by funders. For RSE JOSS could be one of the main publication forums and this restriction weakens RSE possibilities of getting fundings (?)
- JOSS is level 1 in Norway ranking system: https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalTidsskriftInfo.action?id=492835

## JUFO 1 criteria
- specialised in the publication of scientific or scholarly research outcomes
- editorial board constituted by experts
- entire manuscripts of scientific or scholarly articles or books subject to peer review
- registered ISSN or ISBN number

## proposal (1415 characters including spaces)

The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is an open-access peer-reviewed academic journal publishing articles about research software. Given that

- the journal has ISSN 2475-9066
- JOSS publishes research softwares, which are fundamental to achieve reproducible and transparent research outcome. JOSS requires submitted softwares to have a clear application in research, to be well tested and documented and to be easily installable.
- the editorial board is composed by researchers and professors in several computational fields from different countries, see https://joss.theoj.org/about
- manuscripts submitted to JOSS go through a peer-review process, which is fully transparent, as editor and reviewers are mentioned in the final paper and the review process itself happens as a Github issue (link also in the final paper) and it's thus possible to everyone to see reviewers' comments and how the authors addressed those.
- Similar software journals, such as software-X are JUFO 1
- JOSS is level 1 in the Norwegian ranking system: https://dbh.nsd.uib.no/publiseringskanaler/KanalTidsskriftInfo.action?id=492835

JOSS should be promoted to JUFO 1. Being JUFO 0 can discourage or even prevent researchers from publishing there. Particularly, JUFO 0 articles are generally not accepted in doctoral dissertations and this prevents PhD students from getting credits for the research software they develop for their dissertation.

## proposal old

The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is an open-access peer-reviewed academic journal publishing articles about research software. In contrast to traditional journals, JOSS review process also reviews the submitted code and requires it to be features complete, well tested, well documented and easily installable. This aims to improve the quality and reusability of published code, which is fundamental to achieve reproducible open science. JOSS also has a fully transparent review process, as editors, their comments and authors' answers are publicly available on GitHub. The editorial board is composed by professors in computational fields from around the world. JOSS is already recognized as level 1 in the Norwegian ranking system. Unfortunately, in Finland it ranked JUFO 0 and this discourages or even prevents researchers from publishing there. Particularly, JUFO 0 articles are generally not accepted in doctoral dissertations and JOSS being JUFO 0 makes it harder for PhD students to get credits for the software they develop. Given JOSS transparent peer-reviewed process and its requirement to submit fully functional easy-to-use code, we think this hurts the very fundamental ethical principles of reproducible research and ask JOSS to be promoted to JUFO 1.

## other
:::info
> The criteria for Jufo level 1 are as follows:
- specialised in the publication of scientific or scholarly research outcomes
- editorial board constituted by experts
- entire manuscripts of scientific or scholarly articles or books subject to peer review
- registered ISSN or ISBN number

>If the journal is local (over half of the editorial board or authors come from the same organisation - this concerns e.g. publication channels of universities), or questionable, it won't be accepted to level 1. If the journal has operated for a short time (e.g. one year) it may also end up to level 0, although it was otherwise ok.

>Sometimes journals are not accepted to level 1 because the peer-review process is not sufficiently described on their webpages

>does an exclusive focus on code/data description papers fall under "scientific or scholarly research outcomes" ? Are there data journals usually in JUFO1?

>I'm not aware of the current situation. Data journals were discussed in the steering group and it was decided that they will be handled in the same way as other journals. (I was working at JUFO at the time)

>ok, that is good news! And great, I was exactly hoping someone here would have this kind of knowledege!

>So they are not be excluded from JUFO just because they are data journals

>Here's the link to the classification criteria: https://julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/evaluations/classification-criteria

>It's definitely a good idea to propose an amendment to the classification.

>are they generally open to things that match the requirements, or do we expect a lot of resistance?

>If the criteria are met I think there is no reason not to upgrade the journal. If they don't, they can be asked for the grounds.

>And generally, if the criteria are met (and peer-review process etc. are also described on the website), there should not be resistance
:::