JOSS Review - Comments on Paper

[AlexanderJuestel]

This is not a complete list yet

This relates to https://github.com/openjournals/joss-reviews/issues/7019

• [ ] Summary: Has a clear description of the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience been provided?
• [ ] A statement of need: Does the paper have a section titled 'Statement of need' that clearly states what problems the software is designed to solve, who the target audience is, and its relation to other work?
• [ ] State of the field: Do the authors describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages?
• [ ] Quality of writing: Is the paper well written (i.e., it does not require editing for structure, language, or writing quality)?
• [ ] References: Is the list of references complete, and is everything cited appropriately that should be cited (e.g., papers, datasets, software)? Do references in the text use the proper citation syntax?

Comments:

• Summary: It should be mentioned earlier what kind of data can be processed or modelled. This is currently mentioned in the last sentence of the summary.

• Summary: The scope of the implemented tools seems very broad from "creating voxel based three dimensional potential field models (how does this compare to the GemPy package? - https://github.com/gempy-project/gempy), to working with raster and vector data (rasterio and geopandas should be mentioned and referenced in the main text if you heavily build on them), to gravity, remote sensing, earthquake seismology

• Target audience is very briefly mentioned. Do you have examples where you have applied your package that you could mention here?

• Statement of Need: The statement of need quickly transitions into a description of what the package can do rather than outlining what the actual need for this package is. Available packages such as GemPy (strucutral modeling), PyGimli (Geophysical Inversion and Modeling Library), Harmonica (Forward modeling, inversion, and processing gravity and magnetic data) or SimPEG (Simulation and Parameter Estimation in Geophysics, actually a requirement) leafmap/geemap are not discussed or referenced.

--> relation to other work is missing

• What is the overall purpose of the package? Does it have a specific topic or is it more like a toolbox with different smaller tools (similar to my GemGIS package)? If so, it would be good to emphasize that.

• Statement of Need: If you present so much of the capability of PyGMI, I would recommend using one or two more figures outlining the functionality. Maybe create different sections that outline the functionality.

• Statement of Need: The last sentence mentions that PyGMI works with a GUI which is very nice. I would mention this much earlier as this is a feature many other packages do not have.

• You could also add a section Resources linking the wiki package, the repository, etc.

• Figure 1: Figure (with 3 subfigures) with current caption not clear. In the right picture, what doe the lines in the upper plot represent and what do the colored areas in the lower plot represent? (Legends are missing).

• Line 50: Spelling mistake --> solution

[Patrick-Cole]

I have started making corrections. One of my challenges is keeping to the recommended paper length, so I have tried to make brief edits. Let me know if you require more once I am complete. One question, regarding adding more figures to statement of need - do you mean an infographic showing functionality, or perhaps a figure of the main interface? For now I have added to images from some of the functions.

[boisgera]

Hi @Patrick-Cole,

I see that your current word count is 1025 (while the preferred range is 250-1000). As long as your paper does not end up "significantly longer than 1000 words" (say less than 1200 words?), you can give yourself a bit of leeway to improve it.

@AlexanderJuestel, could you chime in on this?

One question, regarding adding more figures to statement of need - do you mean an infographic showing functionality, or perhaps a figure of the main interface? For now I have added to images from some of the functions.

Best Regards,

Sébastien