Elemental: C++ library for distributed-memory linear algebra and optimization

Re:Elemental: C++ library for distributed-memory linear alge... by robotresearcher on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @12:30AM (#10805386)

Can you write solid papers about the software? If it's original and impactful, you ought to be able to write about it. Journal editors can be happy to receive papers about popular and widely-used software, since the articles are likely to be cited a lot. Your happy users write nice reviews and everyone wins.

Some colleagues and I edited a special issue of a journal that had only papers-about-or-with-software and it was pretty well-received. That way I got to do service to my software-heavy colleagues too, with decent credibility due to my own well-known software. Tenure points all round.

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Re:Elemental: C++ library for distributed-memory linear alge... by math_and_stuff on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @12:54AM (#10805459)

There are definitely top-notch journals largely serving this purpose. And I know several academics tenured via such a strategy.

I'll refrain from writing a wall of text on this, but my main point would be that the current objective function largely has a blindspot (open source software as intrinsic scholarship), and that overloaded people tend to be forced to optimize their critical path to "success". And software is decidedly not in the critical path, as you have mentioned.

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