[PRE REVIEW]: Samewords: Word disambiguation in critical text editions

[whedon]

Submitting author: @Stenskjaer (Michael Stenskjær Christensen) Repository: https://github.com/stenskjaer/samewords Version: 0.5.0 Editor: @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman Reviewers: @maieul, @MarjorieBurghart, @Padlina

Author instructions

Thanks for submitting your paper to JOSS @Stenskjaer. 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.

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Editor instructions

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[whedon]

Attempting PDF compilation. Reticulating splines etc...

[whedon]

PDF failed to compile for issue #810 with the following error:

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'

[arfon]

@whedon generate pdf

[whedon]

Attempting PDF compilation. Reticulating splines etc...

[whedon]

--> Check article proof :page_facing_up: <--

[stenskjaer]

I'm a little bit uncertain whether I am expected to react to this, or I just wait until reviewers are assigned?

I could maybe make some minor changes to the text, now that I have seen the PDF proof. But I'm not sure this is the time and place.

[arfon]

I'm a little bit uncertain whether I am expected to react to this, or I just wait until reviewers are assigned?

Hi @stenskjaer - we're currently waiting for an editor to pick up this submission. We currently have close to 100 submissions in progress and so are a little behind. Thanks for your patience.

In the meantime, if you want to edit your paper, please do so and then as @whedon to recompile it with:

@whedon generate pdf

[arfon]

👋 @kyleniemeyer - would you be willing to edit this submission for JOSS?

[stenskjaer]

@whedon generate pdf

[whedon]

Attempting PDF compilation. Reticulating splines etc...

[whedon]

--> Check article proof :page_facing_up: <--

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@stenskjaer thanks for your submission. From reading your paper it seems your work is a useful package to automate the disambiguation of identical words e.g. when writing critical notes. It is unclear to me however how this work is relevant to research (I am not an expert in this field). The submission requirements state:

The software should have an obvious research application

Could you please have a read through the submission requirements and ensure that your paper clearly discusses research applications, and how the software influences research outcomes?

[stenskjaer]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman thank you for your response.

I think it is important to stress that the creation of critical text editions and textual criticism is the most foundational research you can find when it comes to any text interpretative discipline. The purpose of the activity is to provide texts that will be the basis for any subsequent work, be it analysis by a researcher, translation for further sedimentation, or leisurely reading. This activity thus provides the raw material for any kind of research within a given discipline.

Establishing such texts, be it in English, German, French or the classical languages such as Greek and Latin in my own case, is a highly specialized activity presupposing research skills in all the relevant subject areas of a text, such as the linguistic disciplines, the study of the content, but also the whole discipline of stemmatics, codicology, palaeography (it very often involves reading medieval or early modern material in manuscript form), and text history. For some descriptions of these different branches of the discipline, see the wikipedia article.

The review and vetting sheet for the Modern Language Association for critical text editions will give you an impression of some of the requirements of a critical text edition.

To get an impression of what the results of such textual work looks like, I can point you to one of my own publications: https://cimagl.saxo.ku.dk/download/86/86christensen79-131.pdf. But you can also have a look at this picture of a page from the standard critical edition of the New Testament in Greek.

It is all the cryptical scriblings at the bottom of the page, the so-called critical apparatus, that is the focus of this package. That apparatus of critical notes shows how a range of witnesses to a text (in my own case just two manuscripts which of course is much simpler than the hundreds of manuscripts and papyrus fragments in the Greek bible) differ and are related. All that information is very densely represented, as you can see, but it also serves as a direct tool for any domain expert to glean important information about the history of a text, relation between its witnesses and alternative readings of any passages. As you can see, this is not just everyday pedestrial footnotes.

My package is written to make that process of establishing that critical apparatus more accurate and less error-prone. In my view it therefore contributes directly to the improvement of research, as it is used to produce research results in their own right, but those results are also the direct basis for any further research within a text discipline.

If you would like me to, I should be very happy to make these connections clear in the paper. It may be made more clear what is mean by a critical edition in the article. It is kept out for the sake of brevity, as (and I mean absolutely no offence by saying this) I believe that the research application is immediately obvious to to any researcher who uses the software to improve his critical textual editions.

I would also be happy to provide you with any further information about the field, if you have the stamina to evaluate the research literature.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@stenskjaer thanks for that very thorough explanation! I understand what you say and agree that this work is relevant to research and has a research application. It was not obvious to me because this is not my field of expertise. You may leave the paper as is if you and the reviewers will deem it obvious to those in this field. I will now proceed to try to find reviewers for this submission. If you are able to suggest any reviewers that would be really helpful.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@whedon assign @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman as editor

[whedon]

OK, the editor is @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@olivierverdier @JelteF @gpoore @alvinwan @maieul @adunning @kfeuerherm @pharos-alexandria @awtrindade @MarjorieBurghart would you be interested in reviewing this submission (Samewords: Word disambiguation in critical text editions) for the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS)? The review process focuses on the software :floppy_disk: and this short paper :scroll:. This submission features python (for critical text editing) with LaTeX, even if the actual application is not your field of expertise we would still appreciate review contributions in relation to the software itself. We aim to recruit multiple reviewers, some of whom are ideally working in a field related to this submission, however some may not work in this field but their software skills overlap such that they may judge the quality of the software.

[maieul]

Dear @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman I could, but as the author of the software on which Michael software is based, I am not sur to be the best man....

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@maieul thanks for your reply. You are probably hinting at a potential conflict of interest since you developed the "reledmac" package. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Since we'll recruit multiple reviewers, and since you are not an author of the work presented here, I do not consider this to be a serious conflict of interest issue. If you are still interested I'd welcome you as a reviewer given your expertise in this field.

[maieul]

dear @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman it could be ok for myself.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@whedon assign @maieul as reviewer

[whedon]

OK, the reviewer is @maieul

[maieul]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman my opinion : I don't see any problem in the article, except that is may be elliptic on two points:

• what is a critical edition
• in which way editor must mark the text manually with reledmac, and what the software does could be a good point

I don't know the FOSS, but I think the article should be more explicit for not philologist reader.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@maieul thanks for your comments. @stenskjaer can start working on these comments. BTW as a side note this is currently a pre-review issue. You are welcome to start reviewing already but once I have some additional reviewers lined up I'll open the actual review issue. A review issue looks like this and contains a checklist which guides reviewers through the review process. Thanks again for your help!

[stenskjaer]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman This is great! Should I start revising the article based on @maieul's comments or wait until we are furhter in the review process (comments from other reviewer and you as the editor?).

[stenskjaer]

Another possible reviever could be @MarjorieBurghart who first raised the problem within the context of the reledmac LaTeX package (https://github.com/maieul/ledmac/issues/467).

[stenskjaer]

Yet another good possible reviewer could be @Padlina.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@Padlina @MarjorieBurghart would you be interested in reviewing this submission (Samewords: Word disambiguation in critical text editions) for the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS)? The review process focuses on the software :floppy_disk: and this short paper :scroll:.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@stenskjaer you can start working on the comments now if you like. We'll reiterate what has been done as part of the review in the actual review issue as well.

[MarjorieBurghart]

Hello @Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman, yes I am willing to review. What is the deadline plz?

[Padlina]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman I'm also willing to review and I have the same question of @MarjorieBurghart

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@MarjorieBurghart @Padlina Excellent thanks! We generally aim for 2 weeks but there is no real set deadline. Some reviews take days others months but we of course prefer a speedy process.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@whedon add @MarjorieBurghart as reviewer

[whedon]

OK, @MarjorieBurghart is now a reviewer

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@whedon add @Padlina as reviewer

[whedon]

OK, @Padlina is now a reviewer

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@MarjorieBurghart are this and this accurate professional links for you? @Padlina could you share your full name and preferably a link to a professional profile? Apologies I could not tell much from your GitHub profiles.

[MarjorieBurghart]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman the first link is an accurate bio but not an institutional link (it's a project website), the second is the "official" page on my research centre's website

[gpoore]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman I don't have any expertise in this area, just experience with Python and LaTeX. Unfortunately, I'm currently not able to take on any additional projects until at least December, so I would recommend finding others who can review this sooner.

[Padlina]

@Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman My full name is Roberta Padlina. I don't really have a professional profile online, except for LinkedIn (here) which isn't really updated. I'm a PhD student in Medieval Philosophy at the University of Fribourg, but I also work in the DH field: I worked a long time for e-codices (my old page) and I'm working now since a year for the NIE-INE project at the University of Basel (here). Is this info enough?

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@Padlina yes, thanks for sharing that information.

[Kevin-Mattheus-Moerman]

@whedon start review magic-word=bananas

[whedon]

OK, I've started the review over in https://github.com/openjournals/joss-reviews/issues/941. Feel free to close this issue now!