Software Paper Discussion

Just catching up to this now, good initiative. I've made a couple of minor suggested edits in the Google Doc. Happy to turn them into a PR if seen as useful.

Thanks @danielnust. I'll add your edits to the policy. Good point re: defining software papers. Is there an accepted, or possibly just widely used, definition that we could point to now and evolve over time?

There is a lot of good info here: https://joss.theoj.org/

I'd second Bruce here. While EarthArXiv is accepting software papers (with a relation to Earth sciences, right?), it should follow others, who focus on software papers, regarding the definition and content, especially https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/submitting.html#what-should-my-paper-contain

Nevertheless, I suggest to stress the relation to Earth Science applications/research. It would be good if moderators would collect all "software papers" somehow, or maybe we mention a required tag in the moderation policy? This way you can re-visit the definition issue in a year, and iterate.

Thanks @bcaron and @danielnust. I've updated the Moderation Policy with text following JOSS's description. Please see https://eartharxiv.github.io/moderation.html and let me know if you'd like any additional edits.

Great job, Tom. Let's see what this enables. We should spread the word. I'll ping esip and force 11.