covtobed has just been published in JOSS, and I have been amazed by the review process.

JOSS, the Journal of Open Source Software, is a free and open journal that deserve to be known and promoted. The whole review process is open, everyone can read the reviews and see who the reviewers are, but most importantly it’s focused on the software, meaning that you won’t spend hours fixing a figure but every minute devoted to answering the reviewers’ requests will become an improvement for your package.

JOSS requires that every software adopts an open licence, describes how to contribute to its development, has automated tests to ensure integrity, and… last but not least, that it will install :).

A nice touch is the markdown badge that you earn during the review and that will automatically switch to a DOI when the paper will be published:

It’s a shame that the journal is not indexed (maybe it will in the future), but it’s an amazing effort of the developers community to set a better standard for the review of software, and I hope others will adopt this model soon.