OP Lunch Talk #71: "Tackling Scientific Python's Biggest Open Science Challenges Through Community"

Leah Wasser on “Tackling Scientific Python’s Biggest Open Science Challenges Through Community: Packaging, Open Software and Sharing Code”, recorded July 25, 2024.

pyOpenSci is tackling some of scientific Python’s toughest challenges through community building, software peer review, and open science training. Navigating the Python packaging ecosystem can be confusing given the numerous packaging options available. The path to creating a package and sharing your code can be thorny, as can maintaining your software amidst the many tools and options. Through community efforts, we have built consensus around packaging and developed a comprehensive packaging guide that includes tutorials and an overview of the ecosystem.

To facilitate the discovery of vetted software and assist scientists in building better tools, we run a constructive, community-driven peer review process. This process includes partnerships with organizations such as Astropy to increase exposure for domain-specific packages and the partner organization. We also collaborate with the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) to provide academic credit for reviews. By working together, we aim to alleviate the burden of maintaining individual peer review processes and to create unified packaging guidelines. Our goal is to build cohesion within the community.