JOSS's 2026 Updated Commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure

Daniel S. Katz, Arfon M. Smith

The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) is committed to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (currently, version 2.0 (POSI Adopters, 2025), and here we summarize our status in doing so, followed by a more detailed discussion of how we do so, as well as explaining some when we do not, and some work in progress. This is an update of our previous commitment (Katz et al., 2021) to version 1.0 of the principles (POSI, 2021).

This document was assembled by Daniel S. Katz and Arfon Smith, and reviewed and approved by the active JOSS editorial board and topic editors.

Summary

Governance
💚 Coverage across the scholarly enterprise 💛 Stakeholder governed 💚 Non-discriminatory participation or membership 💚 Transparent governance 💚 Cannot lobby 💛 Living will 💚 Regular review of purpose and community value

Sustainability
💛 Transparent operations 💚 Time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities 💛 Goal to generate surplus 💛 Establish and maintain financial reserves guided by policy 💚 Mission-consistent revenue generation 💚 Revenue generated from services, not data 💚 Volunteer labour 💛 Transition planning

Insurance
💚 Open source 💚 Ensure open and secure data accessibility within legal and ethical constraints 💚 Available and preserved 💚 Patent non-assertion 💚 Prioritise interoperability and open standards to ensure continuity and resilience

(💚 = good, 💛 = less good)

Discussion

Governance

💚 Coverage across the scholarly enterprise

*Research transcends disciplines, geography, institutions and stakeholders. Organisations and the infrastructure they run needs to reflect this.

Research software is essential to all types of research, and in response, JOSS’s coverage includes research software in any scholarly discipline, from any place, and from any institution.

The scope of what we publish is only limited by a few guidelines. JOSS publications must be research software of sufficient scholarly effort, which means that some software essential to research is excluded because it is either not research software, (e.g., a C compiler) or too small (e.g., a few hundred lines of Python that implement an existing tool or that provides a wrapper to access a fine-grained data source.) JOSS publications also must have demonstrated clear research impact.

JOSS strives for broad coverage of research disciplines in its editorial board, to better serve a broad community of authors.

💛 Stakeholder governed

  • A board-governed organisation drawn from the stakeholder community builds more confidence that the organisation will make decisions driven by community consensus and a balance of interests.

Open Journals is fiscally sponsored by NumFOCUS, and has a documented governance structure. The steering council, being a small group, is limited in its representation, in terms of geographic, ethnic, gender, and organizational diversity. The editorial board members mostly represent North America and Europe, are mostly white, are mostly male, and are mostly hands-on researchers, primarily from universities and national laboratories.

💚 Non-discriminatory participation or membership

  • We see the best option to be an “opt-in” approach with principles of non-discrimination and inclusivity, where any relevant group may express an interest and should be welcome. Representation in governance must reflect the character of the community or membership.

Most additions to the editorial board, which is the first layer of governance, are made via selections from responses to open calls and strives to be non-discriminatory. JOSS also accepts nominations to the editorial board from existing editors, which could lead to new editors being similar to existing ones, though JOSS consciously considers this when discussing potential new editors.

💚 Transparent governance

  • To foster trust, the processes and policies for governing the organisation and selecting representatives to governance groups should be transparent (within the constraints of privacy laws).

JOSS is publicly transparent, much more so than most other journals. Few issues are not publicly open, but these are generally open to all editors, including initial discussions about potential changes to the journal and discussions about the scope of submissions that may or may not be accepted for review. Even though some of these discussions may not occur in the open, we do publish the decisions themselves, along with an explanation.

💚 Cannot lobby

  • Infrastructure organisations should not lobby for regulatory change to cement their own positions or narrow self-interest. However, an infrastructure organisation’s role is to support its community, and this can include advocating for policy changes.

The vast majority of time and effort used at JOSS is operational, with improvements of JOSS next, and finally some publicity about JOSS, which could be considered lobbying. However, this lobbying is mostly done by the JOSS editors because they think it is important to them, not to JOSS. The fact that they are also JOSS editors is a consequence of their feelings about the importance of recognizing contributions to research software, which also leads them to talk about this with others.

💛 Living will

  • To build trust, organisations should establish and communicate clear commitments regarding their long-term stewardship responsibilities, including the principles by which assets, data, resources, services, and staff would be responsibly transferred to a successor or the organisation or service wound down. The commitments should address future governance, with defined criteria for acceptable successor organisations. This should include continued alignment with POSI and any legal or structural constraints.

As discussed below, there are circumstances in which we would consider the mission of JOSS fulfilled and the journal no-longer necessary. While we have not documented a plan for winding down JOSS, we believe that the core assets associated with the journal’s publications (software, article metadata, papers) are appropriately preserved as part of our ongoing operations. The articles published in JOSS are persistently archived such that an end of the journal will not affect the scholarly record. Additionally, the software that runs JOSS is open-source, and could be reused by others.

💚 Regular review of purpose and community value

  • Organisations and services should regularly review their relevance, effectiveness, and the level of community support to determine whether their continued operation is necessary. If no longer needed, they should take responsible steps to transition or wind down operations in consultation with the community and in alignment with their living will.

As a means for software developers and maintainers to receive credit for their work, JOSS originally vieweds itself as a temporary solution to provide a means for software developers and maintainers to receive credit for their work. However, as a means for software developers and maintainers to have this work (research software) improved by the process of open peer review, JOSS’s mission may not be possible to fulfil. We look forward to a time when software papers are not needed, when software is directly recognized and cited, and when software peer review (potentially using a future version of our criteria and processes) is more widespread. JOSS is volunteer-run as a service to the community, and most of the volunteers will be happy when a journal solution like JOSS is no longer needed, because software has found a more direct avenue to be valued and counted in the scholarly record.

Sustainability

💛 Transparent operations

  • To enable organisational accountability and openness, the operating policies and procedures, detailed financials, sustainability models, fees, strategic and product roadmaps, organisational charts, and other appropriate operational information should be made openly available (within the constraints of privacy laws). Information should be available for investigation and reuse by the community.

JOSS demonstrates most aspects of transparency, including operating policies and procedures, sustainability models, fees, strategic and product roadmaps, organisational charts. However, while JOSS has reported on its financials, detailed information is not regularly openly available.

💚 Time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities

  • Operations should be supported by sustainable revenue sources, whereas time-limited funds are used only for time-limited activities. Depending on grants to fund ongoing and/or long-term operations fully makes organisations fragile and distracts from maintaining core infrastructure.

JOSS does not depend on grants for regular operations, but has attracted grant funding for specific activities to improve the tooling that facilitates running JOSS. We make effective use of time-limited funds such as grants to support enhancements to our services.

💛 Goal to generate surplus

  • It is not enough to merely survive, organisations and services have to be able to adapt and change. Organisations and services that define sustainability based only on recovering costs risk becoming brittle and stagnant. To weather economic, social and technological volatility, organisations and services need financial resources beyond immediate operating costs.

As described in our blog post on the topic, our operational costs are deliberately very low. We currently do not generate a surplus and have no plans to. We also do not employ any staff and so “economic, social and technological volatility” would be expected to have limited impact on JOSS’s finances.

💛 Establish and maintain financial reserves guided by policy

  • Organisations and services should have a clear policy on maintaining financial reserves, including the purpose, minimum and maximum level, and governance of these funds. The actual level of reserves should be determined and periodically reviewed by the governing body, ensuring that resources are available to support Living Will implementation, including an orderly wind-down, transition to a successor, or response to major unforeseen events. A financial reserve policy might include how funds will be held, under what circumstances they will be used, and how much would be necessary for an adequate wind-down or transfer of assets, given the complexity of the organisation’s infrastructure.

We have sufficient funds available today to support our operations for several years, or to cover other potentially needed activities, though as a volunteer-run organization, our costs are operational, and a wind-down or transition wouldn’t be expected to have a financial cost. As a fiscally sponsored project of NumFOCUS, JOSS can and does receive donations from individuals, and we can kick off a fund-raising campaign at short notice. JOSS can also apply for NumFOCUS Small Development Grants, which are awarded several times per year.

💚 Mission-consistent revenue generation

  • Revenue sources should be evaluated against the infrastructure’s mission and not run counter to the aims of the organisation or service.

JOSS revenue comes from three sources: a small amount from donations, a small amount from the American Astronomical Society (AAS) as fees for reviews of the software linked to AAS publications, and a larger amount from grants to the journal related to demonstrating its effectiveness, promoting the importance of research software, and recognizing research software’s contributors, which have been used for infrastructure improvements. These sources of revenue are fully consistent with the mission of JOSS.

💚 Revenue generated from services, not data

  • Data related to the running of the research enterprise should be a community property. Appropriate revenue sources might include value-added services, consulting, API Service Level Agreements or membership fees.

JOSS receives no revenue for its data, which is completely open, but rather receives revenue for its services and for its community impact.

💚 Volunteer labour

  • Organisations that rely on volunteers and their labour should recognise this as a valuable resource for the organisation’s long-term viability, and factor it into sustainability planning and risk management.

JOSS strongly relies on volunteers, and has no shortage of volunteer reviewers or editors. At a higher level, JOSS relies on a small number of volunteers as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) and Associate-Editors-in-Chief (AEiC); see discussion in next POSI principle.

💛 Transition planning

  • Organisations that are heavily dependent on a limited number of individuals should take steps to reduce their dependence on these individuals, including via transition and succession planning, so that the organisation is not at risk of collapse in the event of their departure.

JOSS has successfully had transitions at the AEiC level. Because JOSS editors work in tracks, each led by one or two AEiCs, there is a pool of potential editors to step up to become AEiCs, and because most JOSS reviewers work across tracks, multiple AEiCs are familiar with the work as editors. JOSS is currently undergoing a transition at the EiC level for the first time in its ten-year history, and this first unique transition is exposing some issues with how this role is defined, likely leading to it being split, which could lead to future transition and succession planning challenges.

Insurance

💚 Open source

  • All software and non-physical assets required to run the infrastructure should be available under an open source license. This does not include other software that may be involved with running the organisation.

All JOSS tools are open source and available on GitHub under the Open Journals organization. This includes the JOSS website, our editorial bot “Editorialbot”, and the document production toolchain. Some of the collaboration tools we use as an editorial team are not open (e.g., GitHub, Slack, Google Docs), but these are not critical to the functioning of the journal and could be replaced by open alternatives.

💚 Ensure open and secure data accessibility within legal and ethical constraints

  • To support potential forking or replication, infrastructure should aim to make all relevant data openly available, following best practices such as applying a CC0 waiver where appropriate. This must be balanced with compliance with privacy, data protection, and security requirements. Organisations should have a clear policy outlining how private or sensitive data will be handled—particularly in the event of a transfer to another organisation—to ensure continuity, legal compliance, and responsible stewardship.

Our papers and the (Crossref DOI) metadata associated with them are available on GitHub, with an open license. We deposit open citations with Crossref, and archive papers and our reviews with Portico. JOSS also depends on volunteer reviewers, who register in a dedicated tool, which can then be searched by those who want to suggest or select reviewers for a particular submission. As the data in this system includes personal data, it cannot be CC0-licensed, but the JOSS team would provide it to a successor.

💚 Available and preserved

  • It is not enough that content, data, and software be “open” if there is no practical way to actually obtain themit. These resources should be made easily available with clear public documentation about where they are and how to access them, as well as an open licence where possible. It is not enough that “open” resources are available. In line with the Living Will, it is essential to deposit content, data, and software with at least one trusted third-party digital archive.

Our papers and the (Crossref DOI) metadata associated with them are available on GitHub, with an open license. These data are easily accessible to all motivated to make use of them.

We could potentially create data exports of the JOSS web application database; however this would just be an alternative representation of the data already available.

💚 Patent non-assertion

  • The organisation should commit to a patent non-assertion policy or covenant. The organisation may obtain patents to protect its own operations, but not use them to prevent the community from replicating the infrastructure.

JOSS has no interest in patents, other than resisting the creation of patents that might prevent us from operating freely.

💚 Prioritise interoperability and open standards to ensure continuity and resilience

  • Infrastructures should adopt and support widely accepted open standards—both formal and de facto—to ensure that systems, data, and services can be replicated, migrated, or integrated with minimal disruption without the use of proprietary extensions or software. Where relevant, organisations should document dependencies on standards.

The JOSS software stack and processes are designed to use existing standards and to operate with existing services in a modular manner.

References

Katz, D. S., Smith, A. M., Niemeyer, K. E., Huff, K, Barba, L. A. (2021), JOSS’s Commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. https://blog.joss.theoj.org/2021/02/JOSS-POSI, https://doi.org/10.59349/m5h23-pjs71

POSI. The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure. https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/, https://doi.org/10.24343/C34W2H

POSI Adopters (2025), The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure, https://doi.org/10.14454/G8WV-VM65