JOSS paper preparation

[danielfromearth]

Manuscript draft

This PR is intended for revisions and improvements to the manuscript draft being prepared for submission to the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS).

Paper format: The manuscript is prepared as a Markdown (paper.md) file with references in a paper.bib file, following the JOSS formatting guidelines.

For a PDF preview: With docker installed locally, a PDF preview of the draft manuscript can be generated, by running the following from the earthaccess root directory (as described in the JOSS guidelines's docker section):

docker run --rm \
    --volume $PWD/paper:/data \
    --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
    --env JOURNAL=joss \
    openjournals/inara

---

📚 Documentation preview 📚: https://earthaccess--1249.org.readthedocs.build/en/1249/

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[jules32]

Hi! Great work on this Danny! A few commits and some suggestions to consider.

[mfisher87]

We could symlink this in to our docs!

[mfisher87]

after the v1.0.0 release

I would say let's not wait. We've demonstrated impact and I think that matters more.

Alternatively, let's just go 1.0.0 in the short term and be OK with quickly moving to a 2.0.0 release with breaking changes.

I think both are fine, but the latter sets more a precedent of maintainers taking the user impact of breaking changes too lightly.

[danielfromearth]

after the v1.0.0 release

I would say let's not wait. We've demonstrated impact and I think that matters more.

Alternatively, let's just go 1.0.0 in the short term and be OK with quickly moving to a 2.0.0 release with breaking changes.

I think both are fine, but the latter sets more a precedent of maintainers taking the user impact of breaking changes too lightly.

I'm fine with either too. I also think the decision could be on hold until one of the two things – (i) co-author reviews/revisions, (ii) development for v1.0.0 – is completely ready-to-go.

done

[JessicaS11]

@danielfromearth Love this - thank you so much for putting it together!

Sorry it looks like a lot of edits - most of them are pretty minor (grammatical or editorial), with a few suggestions for the text. All that said, none of them are non-starters for me.

[asteiker]

Such great work @danielfromearth - Thank you for spearheading this!

[asteiker]

How did you perform this search, @danielfromearth ? I'm interested in a better way to surface research outcomes utilizing earthaccess (see #1216) so maybe your process could be applied somehow here.

[danielfromearth]

@asteiker, I think I found them using Google Scholar, but unfortunately don't remember exactly the search terms. I seem to remember searching via the Zenodo DOI too.

[asteiker]

Cool, thanks!

[betolink]

Suggestion: maybe we can use the papers linked to the repositories that have earthaccess as a dependency. @asteiker @danielfromearth

[danielfromearth]

Okay @asteiker, @betolink, I tried finding some more papers using the dependents from GitHub's 'insights' tab by creating (collaboratively with Claude) a script to do the following: For each dependent repo,

1. check whether the repo contains a CITATION.cff file, and
2. query the OpenAlex scholarly database for works whose full text or references mention the repo's GitHub URL , with a second pass to filter false positives from generic repo names.

Here are ones I manually checked afterwards to make sure (1) each article references the repo and (2) each repo indeed includes earthaccess. So, note that these papers don't necessarily cite earthaccess by name; rather, they describe or use software that depends on earthaccess:

• Scheick et al., "Software to Enable Ocean Discoveries: A Case Study With ICESat-2 and Argo", Geoscience Data Journal (2025), icesat2py/icepyx.
• Wu, "Leafmap: A Python package for interactive mapping and geospatial analysis...", JOSS (2021), opengeos/leafmap.
• Joughin et al., "Ocean-induced melt volume directly paces ice loss from Pine Island Glacier", Science Advances (2021), icepack/icepack.
• Mahood et al., "Country-level fire perimeter datasets (2001–2021)", Scientific Data (2022), earthlab/firedpy.
• Durand et al., "A Framework for Estimating Global River Discharge From SWOT", Water Resources Research (2023), SWOT-Confluence/sic4dvar.
• Tankersley, "PolarToolkit: Python Tools for Convenient, Reproducible, and Open Polar Science", JOSS (2024), mdtanker/polartoolkit.
• Xiahou et al., "Hydrographic variability in the central Ross Ice Shelf cavity and the implications for ocean circulation", JGR Oceans (2026), mdtanker/polartoolkit.
• Widlansky & Komar, "Building an Intelligent Data Exploring Assistant for Geoscientists", JGR ML & Computation (2025), uhsealevelcenter/IDEA.
• Gardner et al., "ITS_LIVE global glacier velocity data in near-real time", The Cryosphere (2025), ASFHyP3/itslive-metadata.
• Yusuf et al., "InstaGeo: Compute-Efficient Geospatial ML from Data to Deployment", arXiv (2025), instadeepai/InstaGeo-E2E-Geospatial-ML.

Should we include some of these here, would either of you want to suggest how to work these in without it being too verbose or simply writing out a list?

[danielfromearth]

Hey all, it's been a couple weeks since activity here, so pinging to keep this moving. Would be great to have a complete draft ready to submit before Northern Hemisphere summer!

If there's not a specific note next to your username, a general read-through and comments are welcome:

@andypbarrett
@betolink (there's also this specific question about region-detection)
@chuckwondo (there's also this specific question about region-detection)
@jhkennedy
@jrbourbeau
@battistowx
@Sherwin-14
@jules32 (there's a placeholder to fill in the Openscapes award number)
@asteiker (there are a few follow-ups to your previous comments to address)
@JessicaS11 (there are a few follow-ups to your previous comments to address)

[jules32]

Thank you @danielfromearth ! I've added the award number. Thanks for leading this!

[asteiker]

Cool, thanks!

[JessicaS11]

Suggested change

	endpoints, and the mapping between on-premises and cloud-hosted data links.
	endpoints, and the mapping between download versus cloud-streaming data access links.

[danielfromearth]

Hmm, that sounds okaaay to me, though I'm not sure which is more accurate. Other opinions?

[danielfromearth]

Friendly ping for co-authors who haven't had a chance to review (or at least, approve) yet: @andypbarrett @jhkennedy @jrbourbeau @battistowx @Sherwin-14 @betolink @chuckwondo

Things have been coming together and I think we are getting close to a complete draft that's ready. Would be great to have everyone's eyes on it, even briefly, before we finalize. Could you each take a look in the next week or two?

In particular, please confirm your name, affiliation, and ORCID are correct in the author list. And of course, all other comments welcome.

If timing doesn't work, just comment as such so we know where things stand. Thanks!