Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A JOSS paper describing a Python package for single-cell sequencing analysis, reviewed openly on GitHub
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A research article that uses an existing software tool is not a software paper
Editorial commentary
Software papers give citable scholarly credit for research software engineering work. JOSS reviews are open and focus on the software’s quality (tests, documentation, license) rather than on the novelty of any underlying algorithms. A software paper is a thin scholarly wrapper around a software citation.
References
- Smith et al. 2016 ‘Software Citation Principles’ PeerJ CS
- JOSS Journal of Open Source Software submission guidelines
Also known as
Software descriptor · Research software paper
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
xml
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Software paper"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/software-paper" />json
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"name": "Software paper",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/software-paper",
"description": "A peer-reviewed scholarly publication whose primary subject is a research software package — describing its functionality, architecture, dependencies, testing, and intended uses — published in a venue that issues this format (JOSS, SoftwareX), accompanying the software release in a citable repository.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs-expanded/",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/software-paper",
"sameAs": [
"Software descriptor",
"Research software paper"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
