[PRE REVIEW]: SpecpolFlow: a new software package for spectropolarimetry using Python

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @folsomcp (Colin Folsom)
Repository: https://github.com/folsomcp/specpolFlow
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch):
Version: v0.4.3
Editor: @warrickball
Reviewers: @DerekAstro, @gully
Managing EiC: Warrick Ball

Status

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Markdown: [![status](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/ca985b0c5d225ac1a95b9f2f10ed4452/status.svg)](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/ca985b0c5d225ac1a95b9f2f10ed4452)

Author instructions

Thanks for submitting your paper to JOSS @folsomcp. Currently, there isn't a JOSS editor assigned to your paper.

@folsomcp if you have any suggestions for potential reviewers then please mention them here in this thread (without tagging them with an @). You can search the list of people that have already agreed to review and may be suitable for this submission.

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[editorialbot]

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[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.90  T=7.18 s (7.8 files/s, 121622.7 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assembly                         4              0              3         858014
Python                          17            659           1889           3482
Markdown                        10            310              0            872
Jupyter Notebook                13              0           7097            651
TeX                              1             21              0            309
YAML                             5             18             47            106
TOML                             1              6              6             40
reStructuredText                 5             33             33             10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            56           1047           9075         863484
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Commit count by author:

   208	Colin Folsom
   126	veropetit
    65	christierba
    43	pjstanley1
    33	TaliNatan
    29	Tali Natan
    15	bzaire
    10	shaqsead16
     6	Aaron Moore
     4	Christi Erba
     3	Bonnie Zaire
     3	folsomcp

[editorialbot]

Paper file info:

📄 Wordcount for paper.md is 1755

✅ The paper includes a Statement of need section

[editorialbot]

License info:

🟡 License found: GNU General Public License v2.0 (Check here for OSI approval)

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

✅ OK DOIs

- 10.1093/mnras/291.4.658 is OK
- 10.1051/0004-6361/201015429 is OK
- 10.1017/S1743921314007017 is OK
- 10.12942/lrsp-2012-1 is OK
- 10.1146/annurev-astro-082708-101833 is OK
- 10.1093/mnras/stw2743 is OK
- 10.1093/mnras/sty2895 is OK
- 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2000.03271.x is OK
- 10.1093/mnras/stx3021 is OK
- 10.1007/s11214-015-0152-0 is OK
- 10.1093/mnras/stu1663 is OK
- 10.1088/0031-8949/90/5/054005 is OK
- 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.20091.x is OK
- 10.48550/arXiv.2401.09722 is OK
- 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13946.x is OK
- 10.1093/mnras/stae1955 is OK

🟡 SKIP DOIs

- No DOI given, and none found for title: Stellar magnetism
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Line formation in an unresolved magnetic element: ...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Atomic energy levels - The rare-Earth elements
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Chemical abundances of very young intermediate mas...

❌ MISSING DOIs

- None

❌ INVALID DOIs

- 10.1007/978-1-4020-2415-3 is INVALID

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[editorialbot]

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Submitting author: @profxj
Handling editor: @dfm (Active)
Reviewers: @Gabriel-p, @astrom-tom
Similarity score: 0.7169

⚠️ Note to editors: If these papers look like they might be a good match, click through to the review issue for that paper and invite one or more of the authors before considering asking the reviewers of these papers to review again for JOSS.

[warrickball]

@folsomcp — Thanks for your submission! All the suitable JOSS editors are currently working at capacity so I'm going to "waitlist" this review until an editor with the relevant expertise is available to take it on. Thanks for your patience!

[warrickball]

Note also that the paper is a bit long. Our docs say

The paper should be between 250-1000 words. Authors submitting papers significantly longer than 1000 words may be asked to reduce the length of their paper.

The "Overview of SpecpolFlow" in particular can probably be pared down somewhat. Please try to get the word count closer to 1000 words while we wait for an editor to pick this up. Thanks!

[folsomcp]

Has there been any progress on finding an editor for this paper? It has been a couple months now. @warrickball do you happen to have any updates? If there is anything we can do to help speed things up please let us know.

In the mean time we will try to edit the paper down some more.

[warrickball]

@editorialbot check repository

[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.98  T=7.31 s (7.7 files/s, 119577.1 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assembly                         4              0              3         858014
Python                          17            691           1982           3588
Markdown                        10            309              0            871
Jupyter Notebook                13              0           7110            651
TeX                              1             21              0            309
YAML                             5             18             47            106
TOML                             1              6              6             40
reStructuredText                 5             33             33             10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            56           1078           9181         863589
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Commit count by author:

   212	Colin Folsom
   126	veropetit
    65	christierba
    43	pjstanley1
    33	TaliNatan
    29	Tali Natan
    15	bzaire
    10	shaqsead16
     6	Aaron Moore
     5	Christi Erba
     3	Bonnie Zaire
     3	folsomcp

[editorialbot]

Paper file info:

⚠️ Wordcount for paper.md is 1602

✅ The paper includes a Statement of need section

[editorialbot]

License info:

🟡 License found: GNU General Public License v2.0 (Check here for OSI approval)

[warrickball]

I'm afraid so @folsomcp. If no-one else step forwards, I should have another space within the next week or so. If you can recommend any reviewers, either from our reviewer database, previous JOSS publications (see the authors of the articles suggested above, though these aren't guaranteed to be useful...) or your own network, that'll help whichever editor picks this up get started with looking for reviewers when the time comes.

Sorry for the wait!

[folsomcp]

Thanks for the update!

For potential reviewers, here are some colleagues who have experience with similar analysis techniques to the ones used in the paper, and who might be willing to provide a report.

Julien Morin (Université de Montpellier)
Pascal Petit (Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse)
Coralie Neiner (Paris Observatory)
Sandra Jeffers (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research)
Alexandre David-Uraz (Central Michigan University)
Oleg Kochukhov (Uppsala University)
Stephen Marsden (University of Southern Queensland)

At a quick look those people don't seem to be in the reviewer database.

In the papers above, the paper by gully, reviewed by bmorris3 and wtgee seems to be the most similar to our project. So perhaps one of them could be suitable.

[warrickball]

@editorialbot assign me as editor

[editorialbot]

Assigned! @warrickball is now the editor

[warrickball]

Thanks @folsomcp, I'll pick this one up as editor and start looking for reviewers. Thanks very much for the recommendations!

[warrickball]

By the way, are those suggestions all members of the BCool collaboration, as you are yourself? The BCool website seems to be down right now but that's what I glean from the author list of e.g. Bellotti et al. (2025). JOSS does have a conflict of interest policy for reviewers (and editors):

As a reviewer (or editor), COIs are your present or previous association with any authors of a submission: recent (past four years) collaborators in funded research or work that is published; and lifetime for the family members, business partners, and thesis student/advisor or mentor. In addition, your recent (past year) association with the same organization of a submitter is a COI, for example, being employed at the same institution.

[folsomcp]

Thanks for being the editor on for this!

I should have read that policy before suggesting reviewers. oops!

On my list Julien Morin, Pascal Petit, Sandra Jeffers, and Stephen Marsden are BCool members. (It is an un-funded collaboration, but it leads to some publications together). In a similar vein, Oleg Kochukhov is part of the EXOHOST collaboration that I am also involved with (although we're not directly working together on a project at the moment). Coralie Neiner and Alexandre David-Uraz are not members of those collaborations, although I have published with them.

If you want to avoid anyone I have been a coauthor with in the last 4 years, that narrows down the list of people I can recommend quite a bit. Maybe: James Sikora or Viktor Khalack could be possibilities? (I haven't thoroughly checked if an of the co-authors have published with them recently.)

I would rather avoid a reviewer from the Potsdam stellar physics group. I was recently involved in a competing paper that contradicted some of their work, and so I'm not 100% sure they would be unbiased.

One limitation with my suggestions is that these are people with astronomy expertise (particularly spectropolarimetric observations of stars or stellar magnetic fields) but not necessarily software engineering expertise.

[folsomcp]

One of our coauthors suggested Heloise Stevance as another possibility. She is not really involved in the stellar magnetism community, but has more experience with software development, and familiarity with spectropolarimetry. She seems to be in the reviewer database as HeloiseS.

[warrickball]

@editorialbot add @DerekAstro as reviewer

[editorialbot]

@DerekAstro added to the reviewers list!

[warrickball]

@editorialbot add @gully as reviewer

[editorialbot]

@gully added to the reviewers list!

[warrickball]

@editorialbot start review

[editorialbot]

OK, I've started the review over in #7891.