Editorial Opportunity at the Journal of Open Source Software
The Journal of Open Source Software – known to its friends as JOSS – is is a developer friendly, diamond open access journal for research software packages which has been running since 2016 and is enormously successful, publishing Open Source software across many fields of science. Its UR, joss.theoj.org, is a giveaway that it is a stablemate of astro.theoj.org, aka the Open Journal of Astrophysics.
The driving force behind JOSS, responsible for getting it off the ground at the very beginning, is Arfon Smith whom I’ve known since Nottingham days and it iis fair to say that without his considerable help, OJAp would never have started. Both journals started off as speculative ventures, and OJAp has taken a considerable time to establish itself, but JOSS took off very quickly indeed and has now published over 3,500 papers. There are numerous differences between the two journals but, like OJAp, all publications in JOSS are free to authors and readers.
Arfon has held the role of Editor-in-Chief at JOSS since 2016 but in a recent blog post he explains that he is stepping down from his role as Editor-in-Chief, although he will remain at JOSS. The call for a replacement is here. It’s an opportunity that will appeal to anyone interested in open-source research software and open-access publishing so if that’s you then please consider applying. It will be a substantial investment of time, probably about a day a week. I quote:
Candidates should have the capacity to commit the time this role requires. For those in institutional positions, we ask for a brief letter or statement from your employer or supervisor confirming support for this commitment. Independent researchers, consultants, or others without a traditional institutional affiliation should include a brief statement describing how they plan to allocate the time.
P.S. Today OJAp published its 100th paper of 2026 so far…
P.P.S. I’ll be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief at OJAp in a couple of years, when I retire, and we’ll be doing a similar search nearer the date.
In the Dark 
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