Once again we’re looking to grow our editorial team at JOSS. We’re especially interested in recruiting editors with expertise in bioinformatics, material science, physics, R/statistics, and the social sciences.
Since our launch in May 2016, our existing editorial team has handled over 800 submissions (830 published at the time of writing, 119 under review) and the demand from the community continues to grow. The last three months have been our busiest yet, with JOSS publishing a little over one paper per day, and we see no sign of this demand dropping.
New editors at JOSS are asked to make a minimum 1-year commitment, with additional years possible by mutual consent. As some of our existing editorial team are reaching the end of their term with JOSS, the time is right to bring on another cohort of editors.
Background on JOSS
If you think you might be interested, take a look at our editorial guide, which describes the editorial workflow at JOSS, and also some of the reviews for recently accepted papers. Between these two, you should be able to get a good overview of what editing for JOSS looks like.
Further background about JOSS can be found in our PeerJ CS paper, which summarizes our first year, and our Editor-in-Chief’s original blog post, which announced the journal and describes some of our core motivations for starting the journal.
More recently we’ve also written in detail about the costs related with running JOSS, scaling our editorial processes, and talked about the collaborative peer review that JOSS promotes.
How to apply
Firstly, we especially welcome applications from prospective editors who will contribute to the diversity (ethnic, gender, disciplinary, and geographical) of our board.
✨✨✨ If you’re interested in applying please fill in this short form by 4th March 2020. ✨✨✨
Who can apply
We welcome applications from potential editors with significant experience in one or more of the following areas: open source software, open science, software engineering, peer-review, noting again that editors with expertise in bioinformatics, material science, physics, R/statistics, and the social science are most neded.
The JOSS editorial team has a diverse background and there is no requirement for JOSS editors to be working in academia. Unfortunately individuals enrolled in a PhD program are not eligible to serve on the JOSS editorial team.
Selection process
The JOSS editorial team will review your applications and make their recommendations. Highly-ranked candidates will then have a short (~30 minute) phone call/video conference interview with the editor(s)-in-chief. Successful candidates will then join the JOSS editorial team for a probational period of 3 months before becoming a full member of the editorial team. You will get an onboarding “buddy” from the experienced editors to help you out during that time.
References
Smith A. Announcing The Journal of Open Source Software - Arfon Smith. Published online May 5, 2016. Accessed December 19, 2018. https://www.arfon.org/announcing-the-journal-of-open-source-software
Smith AM, Niemeyer KE, Katz DS, et al. Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS): design and first-year review. PeerJ Computer Science. 2018;4:e147. doi:10.7717/peerj-cs.147
Katz DS, Barba LA, Niemeyer K, Smith AM. Cost models for running an online open journal. Published online June 4, 2019. doi:10.59349/g4fz2-1cr36
Katz DS, Barba LA, Niemeyer K, Smith AM. Scaling the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS). Published online July 8, 2019. doi:10.59349/gsrcb-qsd74