STM publisher Elsevier has announced the launch of a new concept journal, SoftwareX. The online-only journal provides a dedicated publishing home for all software which fundamentally impacts the research process, but traditionally would not be acknowledged or reported on systematically. SoftwareX is an open access journal that publishes peer-reviewed open source software.
As conducting research across disciplines becomes more computer-driven, scientists increasingly need to develop code, software and other computational tools to help them get through various elements and stages of their research. With the launch of SoftwareX, this software can now get the recognition as a scientific publication and as such will also be systematically organised, curated, indexed and shared through research databases. This allows for the wider scientific community to find, evaluate, credit, reuse or build on valuable software development that has been previously done.
The journal forms an outlet, a dissemination channel and sharing platform for software applications and the articles include summaries of where the software has already been used and its impact. Articles published in SoftwareX also display software metadata includes the version, operating system, programming language and the license under which the software is published. All software will be available within the journal's repository on GitHub. The journal will be under the editorship of Kate Keahey, Argonne National Laboratory, USA, Frank Seinstra, Netherlands eScience Center, The Netherlands, and David Wallom, Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford, UK.
