Hi everyone,
Concurrent with the upcoming release of yt 3.5, we plan to do the inaugural stable release of the yt_astro_analysis package. If you're unaware, yt_astro_analysis is a standalone package representing most of what was previously in yt/analysis_modules. Here are some relevant links: https://github.com/yt-project/yt_astro_analysis https://yt-astro-analysis.readthedocs.io/
As a separate package, I think yt_astro_analysis should have its own citable apart from yt for people to reference in their papers. As an example, the unyt https://github.com/yt-project/unyt package is associated with a paper in the Journal of Open Source Software. A simple solution for yt_astro_analysis is to create an entry on zenodo.org. Here is an example of one of those that I made for ytree https://zenodo.org/record/1405101#.W5wYu_5Kjxs. If you go there, you'll see that there is a record of all stable releases and instructions for how to cite in paper. Another nice thing is that the author list can be continually updated.
So, I would like to do this for yt_astro_analysis. In my opinion, the benefit is additional opportunities for people to get credit for their yt contributions while the only potential downside is that it could take away citations from yt itself. I don't really see that happening, and I think we can ensure it by providing specific language for how to cite that would say something about citing both packages.
If people are in favor of this, then the other thing that needs to be decided is the author list. I'm open to many options, but below is my suggestion. Please, comment on this if you have opinions. - Everyone who has made commits to the yt_astro_analysis repo (the history includes everything done when this code was in yt) is automatically included and can choose to opt-out. I've include this list of contributors at the bottom of this email. - Anyone else in the yt community who feels they contributed to this package in some way that isn't recognized by the list of committers can contact me and put their name forward. I don't even need a reason, we can just be maximally inclusive. - The author list is just names or perhaps starts with "The yt Project" and then names. The order is set by number of commits (I know this isn't perfect) or perhaps the top few contributors and then alpha-order. This would put me first, but as the person who has done most of the work to advance this project, I think it's reasonable.
Ok, that's it. I would really like to hear thoughts on this, including "we should not have a separate citable for yt_astro_analysis", if that's how you feel.
Britton
yt_astro_analysis committers:
328 Britton Smith 245 Matthew Turk 177 John ZuHone 126 Nathan Goldbaum 81 Stephen Skory 43 Andrew Myers 37 Cameron Hummels 36 Kacper Kowalik 35 Christopher Moody 33 Hilary Egan 32 Sam Skillman 12 Mike Warren 10 John Wise 10 Geoffrey So 9 Douglas Rudd 8 Joshua Moloney 4 convert-repo 4 Pengfei Chen 4 Sam Leitner 3 Anthony Scopatz 3 Miguel de Val-Borro 2 Michael Kuhlen 2 Casey W. Stark 1 Matthew Krafczyk 1 Mark Richardson 1 Stephanie Tonnesen 1 Bili Dong 1 BW Keller