Science Software Quarterly

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History

Science Software Quarterly was founded in 1984 by executive editor Diana Gabaldon, who at the time was an assistant professor in the Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University. [1] SSQ was first published by ASU. In 1987, the journal was acquired by a new publisher, John Wiley & Sons, who changed the title to Science Software. The software reviews and articles in the journal were not peer-reviewed.

Diana Gabaldon American author

Diana J. Gabaldon is an American author, known for the Outlander series of novels. Her books merge multiple genres, featuring elements of historical fiction, romance, mystery, adventure and science fiction/fantasy. A television adaptation of the Outlander novels premiered on Starz in 2014.

Arizona State University Public university located in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Arizona, United States

Arizona State University is a public metropolitan research university on five campuses across the Phoenix metropolitan area, and four regional learning centers throughout Arizona.

On the new market for scientific software in 1986, Gabaldon wrote, "Within the last year, scientific and technical computer users have emerged as a significant vertical market." But scientists had been using personal computers before their market was discovered. "This means that computer-using scientists were frequently forced to write their own software if they wanted something specific to their needs." [2] SSQ helped acquaint scientists with the newest software applications on the market, and provided evaluations from peers, who reviewed the products.

Scientist reviewers

Authors of the SSQ reviews were volunteer scientists who were experts in their field, selected by the executive editor. For software applications new on the market, the scientist reviewer would install and use the product in his or her work, and then evaluate it. Or a scientist could choose to write a review of software that he or she was already using. Manufacturers supplied a current copy of the software free of charge to each reviewer.

Contents

Software reviews

Example of an SSQ Evaluation Box SSQ-evaluation-box.jpg
Example of an SSQ Evaluation Box

SSQ scientist reviewers would install, learn to use, then evaluate a software package based on the following categories:

Reviewers would write a section on each category above within the review. A checkbox graphic for each review article allowed readers to see at a glance the reviewer's marks for each of the four categories, giving ratings of Unsatisfactory, Poor, Fair, Good, or Excellent.

The review articles would begin with a listing of the vendor for the software, the current price, and the system requirements, which included the type of computer platform, operating system version, minimum RAM (memory) needed, etc. for the software to work properly.

Articles

Articles of interest to scientists using computers were included in SSQ and Science Software on a wide range of topics, such as "Transferring BASIC programs From the Apple II to the IBM-PC." In this example, converting data from one operating system to another was explored and explained, which could be a difficult problem in the 1980s.

Data conversion is the conversion of computer data from one format to another. Throughout a computer environment, data is encoded in a variety of ways. For example, computer hardware is built on the basis of certain standards, which requires that data contains, for example, parity bit checks. Similarly, the operating system is predicated on certain standards for data and file handling. Furthermore, each computer program handles data in a different manner. Whenever any one of these variables is changed, data must be converted in some way before it can be used by a different computer, operating system or program. Even different versions of these elements usually involve different data structures. For example, the changing of bits from one format to another, usually for the purpose of application interoperability or of capability of using new features, is merely a data conversion. Data conversions may be as simple as the conversion of a text file from one character encoding system to another; or more complex, such as the conversion of office file formats, or the conversion of image formats and audio file formats.

Other features

Besides the software reviews, the backbone of SSQ and Science Software, each issue contained:

Features

The Features section of the journal contained a variety of information each month, including:

Recent References

The Recent References section listed articles that might be of interest to scientists using desktop computers, from a wide variety of sources. Articles were listed by author.

Published software reviews

The published software reviews section listed scientific software reviews in other journals that might be of interest to readers. Examples:

Availability

When published, copies were available to individual subscribers by regular mail. Science Software Quarterly was discontinued in 1990. To date, an archive of the journal has not been established on the World Wide Web.

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References

  1. Gabaldon, PhD, Diana J. (1984). "Editor's note". Science Software Quarterly. John Wiley & Sons. I (5): 82, 107. Archived from the original on 2016-04-13.
  2. Gabaldon, PhD, Diana J. (December 1, 1986). "Selling Scientific Software". Science Software Quarterly. John Wiley & Sons. II (4).