Publishing: Developing a categorization of journals that publish software papers, and case studies of alternative publishing mechanisms that have been shown to improve software discoverability/reuse

[danielskatz]

Publishing: Developing a categorization of journals that publish software papers, and case studies of alternative publishing mechanisms that have been shown to improve software discoverability/reuse

[mr-c]

One example is F1000: http://f1000research.com/for-authors/article-guidelines/software-tool-articles

[danielskatz]

@npch has a list that he keeps of some journals that publish software paper, though I don't know if it is categorized.

[mr-c]

@danielskatz Great, though I don't have a meaning for the phrase 'Developing a categorization'. Do you mean an annotated / organized list?

[danielskatz]

I mostly meant organized, though annotated might also be useful

[kyleniemeyer]

Not sure if you want to begin such a list here, but here's one for computational physics and physical chemistry: Computer Physics Communications

[kyleniemeyer]

People here are probably aware of this one already, but the SSI has a list with some categorization: http://www.software.ac.uk/resources/guides/which-journals-should-i-publish-my-software

(edit: sorry @danielskatz, I just realized that this list is probably the one you were referring to earlier)

[kyleniemeyer]

Technically it hasn't actually launched yet, but Research Ideas and Outcomes will publish all research output, including software and data

[kyleniemeyer]

Regarding successful alternate publishing mechanisms, I can say that in my field one successful example is Cantera.

Originally it was hosted on Google Code but more recently migrated to GitHub, and although it hasn't ever been published in the traditional sense (i.e., there isn't a journal publication that documented its release) the combustion/chemical kinetics community has really started to embrace it in recent years—based on the frequency I see it mentioned in papers, at least. My guess is that its success thus far is due to two main reasons:

1. The combination of hosting openly on popular repositories (Google Code -> GitHub) and a supportive developer and user community forum, and
2. A vacuum in terms of available free/open-source software that provided similar functionality. Most people used (and many still do) Chemkin, which was originally developed by Sandia and shared openly, but now is sold commercially.

[owlice]

You might find this effort of interest: https://github.com/arceli/charter