[SciPy-Dev] SciPy 1.0 paper writing proposal

[Joshua Wilson]

> even though I have to publicly admit that I fell flat on my face on the previous attempt.

That doesn't seem fair to yourself; as I recall it the plan was to
have a smaller paper that was more inclusive of all contributors, and
it seemed that non-core people were modest about being included so it
just didn't shake out.

Regardless, I can help with committee stuff.

- Josh

On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 2:29 PM, Evgeni Burovski
<evgeny.burovskiy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 9:14 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Nelson <andyfaff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm obviously up for being on the paper :-), but I'd prefer to contribute
>>> by writing small sections/editing of a paper rather than coordinating.
>>
>>
>> No worries, help of any kind is welcome, and no obligations of course.
>>
>>>
>>> On 21 January 2018 at 14:08, Tyler Reddy <tyler.je.reddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Sounds good -- I'd be up for committee work. Definitely +1 on a paper for
>>>> time justification, etc.
>>
>>
>> Thanks Tyler!
>>
>> Ralf
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>> On 20 January 2018 at 14:03, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> TL;DR, let's write the long journal paper on SciPy that we've wanted for
>>>>> a while, let's form a small committee to coordinate, and get it out the door
>>>>> in 2-3 months.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Motivation
>>>>> ---------------
>>>>> (credits for most of this text: Evgeni)
>>>>>
>>>>> Many scipy contributors' day jobs are in academia. Bibliometry -- papers
>>>>> in
>>>>> refereed journals and citations of papers by other papers -- is one of
>>>>> the main
>>>>> performance indicators in most academic establishments. Since we do not
>>>>> generate papers, scipy contributions are all but invisible for the
>>>>> purposes of a
>>>>> contributor's annual report. Of course, details vary wildly; in many
>>>>> cases a
>>>>> contributor manages to balance their time, or to argue common sense with
>>>>> their
>>>>> superiors, or get an approval for scipy work, or just ignores the issue
>>>>> altogether -- but sooner or later there is a form to be filled or boxes
>>>>> to be
>>>>> checked, and scipy contributions simply do not fit in. A peer-reviewed
>>>>> journal paper on scipy will help contributors get the academic credit they
>>>>> deserve.
>>>>>
>>>>> We can write *the* paper for SciPy 1.0, with overall project structure,
>>>>> goals, etc., and for specific features/modules a focus on say the last 3
>>>>> years.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> History
>>>>> ----------
>>>>> For SciPy 1.0 we had three targets on the publicity/credits front: an
>>>>> interesting release announcement, interesting blogs/stories (NumFOCUS blog,
>>>>> Hacker News, etc.) and a paper. We didn't have the bandwidth for a paper in
>>>>> the end, the rest was successful.
>>>>>
>>>>> [1] is a previous announcement on this list about writing (a) paper(s)
>>>>> on SciPy. We wanted both "short papers" to cover one or two releases (target
>>>>> journal JOSS) and a full paper as the authoritative reference for SciPy.
>>>>>
>>>>> We had an earlier attempt for a "short paper", it's mostly written but
>>>>> has stalled (see [2]). We ran out of steam on that one. To avoid that this
>>>>> time around, it would be good to have a clear public plan, target dates, and
>>>>> a small committee rather than one person to drive things forward.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Proposal
>>>>> ------------
>>>>> Here's a proposal for all aspects of this exercise that I can think
>>>>> about now. Some parts stolen from the AstroPy paper [3] (because their
>>>>> process worked quite well).
>>>>>
>>>>> Form a small coordination committee of 3-5 people that set up the paper
>>>>> structure, move things along when parts stall, propose/take decisions as
>>>>> needed, invite co-authors, and organise paper submission/rework.
>>>>>
>>>>> Paper writing to be done by whoever volunteers for a section, not just
>>>>> the coordination committee. First outline/structure to be done by committee,
>>>>> which then asks for review of structure and volunteers for section writing.
>>>>>
>>>>> Scope: a 6-10 page paper, covering history, package scope and structure,
>>>>> community/organisational aspects, key features and recent enhancements per
>>>>> module, and roadmap.
>>>>>
>>>>> Authorship: anyone who made a substantial contribution in the history of
>>>>> the project. Here "substantial" is interpreted as anything beyond a one-line
>>>>> doc fix. Rationale: better to be too inclusive than exclusive. Sign-up via a
>>>>> web form, we send the link to that form to all email addresses in the commit
>>>>> history till v1.0.
>>>>>
>>>>> Author order (details tbd by committee):
>>>>> 1. The SciPy Developers
>>>>> 2. Maintainers, paper writers, other key contributors - in order of
>>>>> contribution level
>>>>> 3. All other authors - alphabetically ordered
>>>>>
>>>>> Submission target: mid-April, to either PeerJ Computer Science or
>>>>> Journal of Open Research Software (tbd by committee).
>>>>>
>>>>> Comments? Volunteers for committee?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> References
>>>>> ----------------
>>>>> [1] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/2016-August/021474.html
>>>>> [2] https://github.com/scipy/scipy-articles/pull/4
>>>>> [3] https://github.com/astropy/astropy-v2.0-paper
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Ralf
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> SciPy-Dev mailing list
>>>>> SciPy-Dev at python.org
>>>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> _____________________________________
>>> Dr. Andrew Nelson
>>>
>>>
>
>
> Thanks Ralf for pushing this forward!
> Count me in --- even though I have to publicly admit that I fell flat
> on my face on the previous attempt.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Evgeni
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