Journal of Open Source Software
===============================

The `Journal of Open Source Software <http://joss.theoj.org/>`_ (JOSS) is a developer friendly journal for research software packages.

JOSS is an academic journal (ISSN 2475-9066) with a formal peer-review process that is designed to *improve the quality of the software submitted*. Upon acceptance into JOSS, we mint a CrossRef DOI for your paper and we list it on the `JOSS website <http://joss.theoj.org/>`_.

About this site
---------------

This site contains documentation for authors interested in submitting to JOSS, reviewers who have generously volunteered their time to review submissions, and editors who manage the JOSS editorial process.

If you're interested in learning more about JOSS, you might want to read:

- `Our announcement blog post <http://www.arfon.org/announcing-the-journal-of-open-source-software>`_ describing some of the motivations for starting a new journal
- `Preparing JOSS for a generative AI future: From code to human creativity and design <https://blog.joss.theoj.org/2026/01/preparing-joss-for-a-generative-ai-future>`_ - a Jan. 2026 blog post about changes we made in response to the growth of generative AI
- `A 2018 paper in Computing in Science and Engineering <https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2018.03221930>`_ introducing JOSS
- `A 2018 paper in PeerJ CS <https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.147>`_ describing the first year of JOSS
- `A 2025 paper in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication <https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.18285>`_ about JOSS's bringing open-source software practices to the scholarly publishing community
- The `about page <http://joss.theoj.org/about>`_ on the main JOSS site


Submitting a paper to JOSS
--------------------------

If you'd like to submit a paper to JOSS, please read the author submission guidelines in the :doc:`submitting` section.

Sponsors and affiliates
-----------------------

.. image:: images/sponsors.png
  :alt: OSI & NumFOCUS

JOSS is a proud affiliate of the `Open Source Initiative <https://opensource.org/>`_. As such, we are committed to public support for open source software and the role OSI plays therein. In addition, Open Journals (the parent entity behind JOSS) is a `NumFOCUS-sponsored project <https://www.numfocus.org/project/open-journals>`_.

.. toctree::
  :caption: Author Guides
  :maxdepth: 5

  submitting
  paper
  example_paper
  policies

.. toctree::
  :caption: Reviewer Guides
  :maxdepth: 5

  reviewer_guidelines
  review_criteria
  review_checklist

.. toctree::
  :caption: Editor Guides
  :maxdepth: 2

  editing
  expectations
  editor_onboarding
  editor_tips
  sample_messages

.. toctree::
  :caption: The Editorial Bot
  :maxdepth: 2

  editorial_bot

.. toctree::
  :caption: Developer Guides
  :maxdepth: 2

  installing
