Joss-reviews: [PRE REVIEW]: ipc: An R Package for Inter-process Communication

[whedon]

Submitting author: @ifellows (Ian Fellows)
Repository: https://github.com/fellstat/ipc
Version: 0.1.0
Editor: @yochannah
Reviewers: @mschubert , @JohnCoene

Author instructions

Thanks for submitting your paper to JOSS @ifellows. The JOSS editor (shown at the top of this issue) will work with you on this issue to find a reviewer for your submission before creating the main review issue.

@ifellows if you have any suggestions for potential reviewers then please mention them here in this thread. In addition, this list of people have already agreed to review for JOSS and may be suitable for this submission.

Editor instructions

The JOSS submission bot @whedon is here to help you find and assign reviewers and start the main review. To find out what @whedon can do for you type:

@whedon commands

[whedon]

Hello human, I'm @whedon, a robot that can help you with some common editorial tasks. @yochannah it looks like you're currently assigned as the editor for this paper :tada:

For a list of things I can do to help you, just type:

@whedon commands

[whedon]

Attempting PDF compilation. Reticulating splines etc...

[whedon]

Failed to discover a valid open source license.

[arfon]

:wave: @yochannah - the submitting author suggested you as the handling editor.

[whedon]

:point_right: Check article proof :page_facing_up: :point_left:

[ifellows]

note: license specified in package as per https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-exts.html#Licensing

[ifellows]

Quickly looking over potential reviewers it looks like JohnCoene and wrathematics might be good fits.

[yochannah]

@ifellows thanks for your suggestions for potential reviewers, that's really handy!

One of the requirements for JOSS papers is that they should have an obvious research application. Could you elaborate a little bit how this package is used for research?

Re: licencing - it would probably be best if you could include a LICENSE file in your repo as well, and add it to your .Rbuildignore if you wish.

Thanks!

[ifellows]

Thanks.

Sorry if it wasn't immediately apparent from the paper. Like the recent datastructures paper, this package is supporting infrastructure for researchers. It comes out of a CDC initiative to build UIs for complex statistical methods for use by researchers in the field.

Often research requires computationally intensive activity. This package supports HPC by making it easy for the researcher to monitor their distributed processing by having child threads report back partial results and progress. Additionally, shiny is very popular among researchers for building user interfaces to their methods. Currently shiny becomes unresponsive with computationally intensive tasks (see for example http://blog.fellstat.com/?p=407 ). This package fixes this allowing for responsive, scalable applications. Three such applications are included in the package as examples.

[yochannah]

@ifellows Thanks, that does make sense - HPC is definitely an important part of research, and as you say, Shiny is well-loved amongst researchers too - I can see why one might want to make it more able to handle computationally intensive tasks.

Please go ahead and add a LICENSE file to your repo as well. 👍

[yochannah]

👋 @wrathematics and @JohnCoene - hey there! Can we interest either or both of you in reviewing this package? Thanks!

[ifellows]

@yochannah : License file added. Actually made it MIT while I was at it.

[JohnCoene]

@ifellows @yochannah I had a brief look at the paper, I'm happy to review it but I'm away for the next 2 weeks and can't do anything before 1st October. Feel free to assign someone else if that is too long.

[ifellows]

@whedon generate pdf

[whedon]

Attempting PDF compilation. Reticulating splines etc...

[whedon]

:point_right: Check article proof :page_facing_up: :point_left:

[yochannah]

@JohnCoene thanks for letting us know! I'll look for someone in the meantime and loop back if we're still looking in two weeks!

[yochannah]

@mschubert Hey there! 👋 Is this something you'd be interested in reviewing?

[mschubert]

Hi @yochannah! I'd be happy to (and my apologies for the delay)

[yochannah]

@mschubert fantastic and thank you! I'm hunting for a second reviewer (suggestions welcome if you have any) and then I'll kick off the review process.

[mschubert]

As the author of the txtq package (which this package builds on), @wlandau might have some good input?

[wlandau]

Thanks for the endorsement. However, since ipc builds on txtq, I am not sure a review from me would be sufficiently free of bias. (And like @JohnCoene, I will be away from Sept 15 through Oct 1). I think @clarkfitzg would be an excellent second reviewer, should he accept.

[yochannah]

Hey @clarkfitzg, would you be interested in reviewing?

[ifellows]

@yochannah , since it is now the 25th, I'd like to suggest we move forward with @mschubert and @JohnCoene . What do you think?

[yochannah]

@ifellows sounds like a good plan!

@JohnCoene: Are you good to go ahead reviewing?

[JohnCoene]

@yochannah Just got back; yes, I can help review this paper.

[yochannah]

@whedon assign @mschubert as reviewer

[whedon]

OK, the reviewer is @mschubert

[yochannah]

@whedon add @JohnCoene as reviewer

[whedon]

OK, @JohnCoene is now a reviewer

[yochannah]

@whedon start review

[whedon]

OK, I've started the review over in https://github.com/openjournals/joss-reviews/issues/988. Feel free to close this issue now!

[yochannah]

Thanks everyone! @ifellows, @mschubert @JohnCoene: let's hope over to #988 to get the review started :)