Joss-reviews: [PRE REVIEW]: Special relativity in R: the lorentz package

[whedon]

Submitting author: @RobinHankin (Robin Hankin)
Repository: https://github.com/RobinHankin/lorentz
Version: 1.0-3
Editor: @arfon
Reviewer: Pending

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[whedon]

Attempting PDF compilation. Reticulating splines etc...

[whedon]

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

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@xuanxu @mbobra @meg-simula can one edit this one?

[xuanxu]

Relativity + R is a mix out of my area of expertise, I’ll have to pass on this one

[arfon]

I suspect this paper is going to be tough for any of our editors to be honest. I'll take it.

[arfon]

@whedon assign @arfon as editor

[whedon]

OK, the editor is @arfon

[arfon]

@RobinHankin - thanks for your submission to JOSS.

I've had a quick read of the paper associated with this submission and I think it could do with a little work. In particular we ask that your paper contains:

• A summary describing the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience.
• A clear Statement of Need that illustrates the research purpose of the software.

While there is some useful background here, it's not immediately clear what current research applications this software has.

In addition, can you clarify that this package is being used actively in research and has not simply been written as a learning exercise? In such situations, we have the Journal of Open Source Education for these types of papers.

[RobinHankin]

thanks for this Arfon

I'll rewrite the submission as you suggest. The research purpose of the
package is, as stated, to search for a generalization of the classical
distributive law; and this is ongoing work. But, even though I've searched
a very large space for a possible distributive law, I didn't find one.
Does this matter?

[e-mail]
hankin.[email protected]

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

On Sat, Oct 19, 2019 at 2:42 AM Arfon Smith [e-mail]
wrote:

@RobinHankin https://github.com/RobinHankin - thanks for your
submission to JOSS.

I've had a quick read of the paper associated with this submission and I
think it could do with a little work. In particular we ask
https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/submitting.html#what-should-my-paper-contain
that your paper contains:

• A summary describing the high-level functionality and purpose of the
  software for a diverse, non-specialist audience.
• A clear Statement of Need that illustrates the research purpose of
  the software.

While there is some useful background here, it's not immediately clear
what current research applications this software has.

In addition, can you clarify that this package is being used actively in
research and has not simply been written as a learning exercise? In such
situations, we have the Journal of Open Source Education
http://jose.theoj.org for these types of papers.

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[RobinHankin]

Arfon, can I press you for some advice on my submission please?

[arfon]

I'll rewrite the submission as you suggest. The research purpose of the
package is, as stated, to search for a generalization of the classical
distributive law; and this is ongoing work. But, even though I've searched
a very large space for a possible distributive law, I didn't find one.

Sorry, please do go ahead and redraft. I'm afraid I still don't quite understand what the research goal of this work is but I'm hoping that your reworked paper will help explain this to me (and potential readers).

[RobinHankin]

thank you Arfon, I appreciate your advice. I will rework the submission as
you suggest. I was not aware of JOSE; I checked it out but feel that the
lorentz work is more appropriate for JOSS.

With best wishes

Robin

[e-mail]
hankin.[email protected]

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 9:10 AM Arfon Smith [e-mail]
wrote:

I'll rewrite the submission as you suggest. The research purpose of the
package is, as stated, to search for a generalization of the classical
distributive law; and this is ongoing work. But, even though I've searched
a very large space for a possible distributive law, I didn't find one.

Sorry, please do go ahead and redraft. I'm afraid I still don't quite
understand what the research goal of this work is but I'm hoping that your
reworked paper will help explain this to me (and potential readers).

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[RobinHankin]

Arfon, I've redrafted paper.md in the repo, and I was just about to click the 'withdraw paper' button at

https://joss.theoj.org/papers/1d90c3a705d7106477e7071c350f8025

but I hesitated because it is not a withdrawal, it is more of a redraft (although I have done a little bit of work on the software as well). Can you advise?

[arfon]

There's no need to withdraw. We can keep working with this submission here.

[RobinHankin]

OK thanks Arfon. Can I check that there are no actions on me?

[arfon]

OK thanks Arfon. Can I check that there are no actions on me?

Yep, it's on me to get back to you on this. I'm currently a little swamped with other submissions.

[arfon]

@whedon generate pdf

[whedon]

Attempting PDF compilation. Reticulating splines etc...

[whedon]

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

[arfon]

Hi @RobinHankin - firstly my apologies for taking so long to get to this. I've consulted with the JOSS editorial team and we've concluded that this submission is not in scope for JOSS as it falls into our 'minor utility' category.

Thanks again for your interest in JOSS.

[RobinHankin]

OK Arfon, thanks for this.

I'm not trying to be difficult here, and I'm not querying the decision,
but can I have some feedback on this please? The package is an
efficient, coherent and documented numerical environment for working with
the Lorentz transform that has research applications over a wide range of
physical and mathematical applications. JOSS publishes similar R packages
for physical problems such as FluxCalR . . . How come my work isn't in
scope for JOSS? It just doesn't seem fair.

Can you advise?

On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 8:59 AM Arfon Smith [e-mail]
wrote:

Hi @RobinHankin https://github.com/RobinHankin - firstly my apologies
for taking so long to get to this. I've consulted with the JOSS editorial
team and we've concluded that this submission is not in scope for JOSS as
it falls into our 'minor utility' category.

Thanks again for your interest in JOSS.

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[arfon]

Sure thing. I'll work with the other editors to get you a more formal response in the next couple of days.

[arfon]

After consulting with two experts in the field of relativity, this software was deemed minor (i.e. it carries out relatively simply matrix-vector multiplication) and fell short of another criteria we use for JOSS submissions, related to being a 'significant contribution to the available open source software' in this area:

The software should be a significant contribution to the available open source software that either enables some new research challenges to be addressed or makes addressing research challenges significantly better (e.g., faster, easier, simpler).

The Lorentz transform in special relativity is really just a matrix-vector multiplication with the matrix elements given by a simple formula, eg this one (B(v)): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transform#Proper_transformations Going from three to four velocity and back amounts to solving a quadratic equation.

While this looks like a nicely put together piece of software, we believe that existing tools such as cadabra (https://cadabra.science) or SageManifolds (https://sagemanifolds.obspm.fr) are both well-established, and likely preferable software for addressing these research challenges.

We also have doubts about how popular R is for practitioners in the field (ie physicists) who generally use Python for numerical calculations or Mathematica, Maple, SymPy, or similar for symbolic manipulations (which this code does not appear to offer).