On Mon, 02 Oct 2006, Travis Oliphant apparently wrote:
My preferred approach is to have this divided into two Journals (call them A and B for now) which clarify the difference in novelty.
The "A" journal would discuss contributions where a novel algorithm, implementation, or idea is expressed while the "B" contributions are module-style Python implementations of previously-known algorithms. Another candidate for the "A" journal might be documentation and "packaging" of several "B" contributions into something that could be a SciPy sub-package.
Here is an alternate proposal: have one journal with well designated sections. If desirable, a section that experiences large growth in quality submissions can be split off later. Until then, all citations will be to a single journal, which will be helpful for name recognition (which is needed for several reasons). Four of the sections could simply be called "Algorithms", "Packages", "Implementations", and "Reviews". Each can have specific criteria for submission. Oddly enough, I do not think the name "Computational Science" is taken, and it might be nice ... Finally, to reduce the editor's burden, it will be important to limit the formats allowed for submission. If it is to be a free journal, authors must typeset articles themselves. I recommend requiring LaTeX and allowing the use of the listings package. This may be overkill, although some math journal(s) have almost fully automated the publication process this way. Also allowing restructured text, which has a LaTeX writer, may be useful---I do not know. Cheers, Alan Isaac