JOSS is continuing to grow, and we are looking to add more editors again. We’re especially interested in recruiting editors with expertise in bioinformatics, neuroinformatics/neuroimaging, material science, ecology, machine learning & data science, and the social sciences.
Since our launch in May 2016, our existing editorial team has handled over 1800 submissions (1200 published at the time of writing, 170 under review) and the demand from the community continues to grow. The last three months have been our busiest yet, with JOSS publishing more than one paper per day, and we see no sign of this demand dropping.
Editors at JOSS make a minimum 1-year commitment, with additional years possible by mutual consent. With some of our existing editorial team reaching the end of their terms with JOSS and this increase in submissions, the time is right to bring on another cohort of editors.
Editing for a journal during a pandemic
After a pause on submissions in early 2020, JOSS has been open for submissions during most of the pandemic. We recognize that making time for volunteer commitments such as JOSS is especially challenging at this time and are taking steps to reduce the load on authors, editors, and reviewers and continually striving to find the right balance between accommodating the very real challenges many of us now face in our daily lives, and providing a service to the research software community.
Editing for JOSS is a regular task, but not one that takes a huge amount of time. JOSS editors are most effective if they are able to check in on their submissions a couple of times per week. Our goal is that a JOSS editor handles about three submissions at any one time making for about 25 submissions per year.
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 our commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure the costs related with running JOSS, scaling our editorial processes, and talked about the collaborative peer review that JOSS promotes.
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, neuroinformatics/neuroimaging, material science, ecology, machine learning & data science, and the social sciences are most needed.
Members of the JOSS editorial team have diverse backgrounds and we welcome JOSS editors from academia, government, and industry. We especially welcome applications from prospective editors who will contribute to the diversity (ethnic, gender, disciplinary, and geographical) of our board. We also value having a range of junior and senior editors.
How to apply
✨✨✨ To apply please fill in this short form by 23 April 2021. ✨✨✨
Selection process
The JOSS editorial team will review your applications and make 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 probationary 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.
Thanks to our editors who are stepping down
A few of our editors are completing terms and stepping down from editorial duties at JOSS. Lorena A Barba (@labarba), Kathryn Huff (@katyhuff), Karthik Ram (@karthik), and Bruce E. Wilson (@usethedata) have been amazing editors to have on the team and we will miss them very much!
References
Smith A. Announcing The Journal of Open Source Software - Arfon Smith. Published online May 5, 2016. Accessed July 12, 2022. https://www.arfon.org/announcing-the-journal-of-open-source-software
Smith AM. Reopening JOSS. Published online May 18, 2020. doi:10.59349/4tz9w-yq369
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, Smith AM, Niemeyer K, Huff K, Barba LA. JOSS’s Commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. Published online February 14, 2021. doi:10.59349/m5h23-pjs71
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