Until there is a radical change in the way that academic credit is given, the principal record of scientific research is still the peer-reviewed publication. Given that software is a fundamental part of doing science in the digital age, the question we are often asked is: where can I publish papers which are primarily focused on my scientific software?
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In which journals should I publish my software?
By Neil Chue Hong.
The following is a list of journals which accept submissions that are primarily about the software, and not necessarily on new algorithms or new science. There is an expectation that the use of the software will enable new research to be carried out. This list of journals is not exhaustive - if you know of others, please let us know.
General Journals
- Computing in Science & Engineering
- Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience
- Journal of Open Research Software
- The Journal of Open Source Software [example]
- Journal of Software: Practice and Experience
- Nature Toolbox
- Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO)
- SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC) Software section
- SoftwareX
Engineering
Humanities and Social Sciences
- Digital Humanities Quarterly
- Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
- Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control
Image processing
Informatics, Mathematics and Statistics
- ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software
- The Archive of Numerical Software
- Future Generation Computer Systems
- Journal of Machine Learning Research (Machine Learning Open Source Software track)
- Journal of Multiscale Modelling and Simulation
- Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
- Journal of Software for Algebra and Geometry [example]
- Journal of Statistical Software
- Knowledge-Based Systems
- LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics [example]
- The Mathematica Journal [example]
- Mathematical Programming Computation
- Numerical Algorithms
- PeerJ Computer Science [example]
- The R Journal
- Science of Computer Programming [example]
- The Stata Journal [example]
Life Sciences
- American Journal of Human Genetics
- Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
- Artificial Life
- Behaviour Research Methods [example]
- Bioinformatics (Application Notes)
- Bioinformatics and Biology Insights
- Biophysical Journal
- BMC Bioinformatics
- BMC Neuroscience [example]
- BMC Systems Biology
- BMC Source Code for Biology and Medicine
- Bone
- Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine [example]
- Current Protocols in Bioinformatics
- Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation
- Ecography (Software Notes) [example]
- eLife (Tools and Resources) [example]
- Epidemiology
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics
- F1000 Research
- Frontiers in Neuroinformatics
- Gigascience
- Methods in Ecology and Evolution
- Nature Methods [example]
- Neurocomputing
- Neuroinformatics
- Nucleic Acids Research (special issues)
- PeerJ [example]
- PLoS Computational Biology: Software collection
- PLoS ONE
- Trends in Parasitology
Physical Sciences and Geosciences
- AAS: The Astronomy Journal
- AAS: The Astrophysical Journal
- AAS: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series [example]
- Astronomy and Computing
- Communications in Computational Physics
- Computational Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Computer Physics Communications
- Computers and Geosciences [example]
- Computing and Software for Big Science
- Environmental Modelling & Software (short communication) [example]
- Geoscientific Model Development
- International Journal of Quantum Chemistry
- Journal of Applied Crystallography [example]
- Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
- Journal of Chemical Information and Modelling
- Journal of Cheminformatics
- Journal of Computational Chemistry (special articles - software news and updates)
- Molecular Simulation
- SciPost Physics Codebases (software articles and code)[example: paper, code]
- Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Molecular Science (Software Focus) [example]
Acknowledgements
Thanks to participants at the Collaborations Workshop 2012 for brainstorming the question originally, David Ketcheson for raising this question on StackExchange in parallel, and Aron Ahmadia, Alice Allen, François Briatte, Edwin Dalmaijer (@esdalmaijer), Andrew Davison (@apdavison), Michael Doube (@mdoube), Stephen Eglen, Jes Ford, Carole Goble (@CaroleAnneGoble), Nick Higham (@nhigham), Jason Hoyt, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz (@iainh_z), Olexandr Konovalov, Andrew McCluskey, Matt McCormick, Lawrence Mitchell, Ross Mounce, Ahmed Moustafa (@AhmedMoustafa), Bob Muscarella, Barry Rowlingson (@geospacedman), Michael Seaton (@dl_mesa), Gavin Simpson, Arfon Smith (@arfon), Laura Soito, Barrie Stokes, Chris Swain, Pavel Tomncak (@PavelTomancak), Olav Vahtras, Carolina Wahlby, Robin Wilson (@sciremotesense), and Hang Xiong for contributing additional information.