[PRE REVIEW]: Whereabouts: Fast, Accurate, Open-Source Geocoding in Python

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @ajl2718 (Alexander Lee)
Repository: https://www.github.com/ajl2718/whereabouts
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch):
Version: V0.3.14
Editor: Pending
Reviewers: Pending
Managing EiC: Chris Vernon

Status

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Markdown: [![status](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/65276e4acba468c690621e2a8274c16a/status.svg)](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/65276e4acba468c690621e2a8274c16a)

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Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.90  T=0.03 s (2185.7 files/s, 116747.1 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SQL                             21             13              9           1078
Python                          16            222            424            770
Markdown                         2             54              0            126
reStructuredText                 6             63             28             76
YAML                             5              4              4             71
TeX                              2              2              0             39
TOML                             1              2              0             30
JSON                             3              0              0             28
DOS Batch                        1              8              1             26
make                             1              4              7              9
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            58            372            473           2253
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Commit count by author:

   109	alex2718
   107	ajl2718
     8	Alex
     1	Alex Lee

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

✅ OK DOIs

- None

🟡 SKIP DOIs

- None

❌ MISSING DOIs

- 10.1007/978-981-13-0292-3_7 may be a valid DOI for title: Exploiting Redundancy, Recurrence and Parallelism:...
- 10.1145/3269206.3272016 may be a valid DOI for title: Scalable Entity Resolution Using Probabilistic Sig...

❌ INVALID DOIs

- None

[editorialbot]

Paper file info:

📄 Wordcount for paper.md is 780

✅ The paper includes a Statement of need section

[editorialbot]

License info:

✅ License found: MIT License (Valid open source OSI approved license)

[editorialbot]

⚠️ An error happened when generating the pdf.

[ajl2718]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[editorialbot]

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⚠️ Note to editors: If these papers look like they might be a good match, click through to the review issue for that paper and invite one or more of the authors before considering asking the reviewers of these papers to review again for JOSS.

[ajl2718]

Suggested reviewer: musabgultekin

[ajl2718]

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[ajl2718]

@editorialbot list reviewers

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[ajl2718]

@editorialbot list reviewers

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[ajl2718]

@editorialbot add @musabgultekin as reviewer

[editorialbot]

I'm sorry @ajl2718, I'm afraid I can't do that. That's something only editors are allowed to do.

[ajl2718]

@musabgultekin would you be happy to review? I'm not sure if there is anything I need to do at my end to ensure you are added as a reviewer.

[musabgultekin]

Yes I'm happy to review. I think an editor needs to decide that in the end.

[crvernon]

@ajl2718 - please do not invite reviewers in this thread. I will assign a topic editor to this submission after it has been deemed appropriate for review. The topic editor will then find reviewers that they think are a best fit for this submission and may reach out to you for suggestions. Thanks.

[crvernon]

@editorialbot query scope

👋 @ajl2718 - I am going to run this one by our larger editorial board due to it's smaller code base to ensure it meets our substantial scholarly effort requirement. This should take about two weeks at the most. I'll let you know what I hear back ASAP.

[editorialbot]

Submission flagged for editorial review.

[ajl2718]

Thanks @crvernon

[ajl2718]

Hi @crvernon, just wanted to follow up to see if you had any updates on the review for this paper.

[crvernon]

Hi @ajl2718 - the scope query is almost complete. We are just finalizing discussion on a few items. I'll be back in touch ASAP.

[crvernon]

👋 @ajl2718 - could you provide a bit more information about the algorithms paper that was published (https://doi.org/10.1145/3269206.3272016)? Was the code in this submission to JOSS evaluated by reviewers in that paper at all?

[ajl2718]

Hi @crvernon, no the code for this submission was not evaluated by reviewers in that paper. This package has been developed independently of those papers and I am not claiming to have developed the algorithms myself. The algorithms that I have implemented in the package are based on one described in this paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.01402) which, as I understand it, is itself is derived from the paper you mention above, though focused specifically on postal addresses rather than general record linkage / entity resolution. I have made some small novel modifications to the algorithms described in those papers, in order to better handle spelling variations and reduce storage requirements of the resulting databases. Please let me know if you need any additional information.

[ajl2718]

Hi @crvernon, is there any update on the scope query?

[arfon]

@ajl2718 – after discussions amongst the editorial team, we've concluded that this software falls into our 'minor utility' category, and is therefore not in scope for JOSS.

One possible alternative to JOSS is to follow GitHub's guide on how to create a permanent archive and DOI for your software. This DOI can then be used by others to cite your work.

[arfon]

@editorialbot reject

[editorialbot]

Paper rejected.

[ajl2718]

Hi @arfon , Thank you for the response. I would like to request that the decision be reconsidered, based on the points below:

• A similar library, tidygeocoder was accepted to JOSS previously, suggesting that it is within scope.
• Like tidygeocoder, whereabouts solves the task of geocoding. However, unlike that library, it implements these algorithms as part of the package, rather than relying on existing APIs. Therefore I do not believe whereabouts should be considered a ‘minor utility.’
• By carrying out geocoding in this way, users can perform these tasks within their own environments, rather than sending (sometimes sensitive) data to external service, which better supports many uses cases, particularly in healthcare.

Please could you reconsider the decision or clarify based on the points described above?