This document describes the set of review criteria for packages applying to become Astropy-affiliated, and is intended for reviewers.
If you are reading this because you have accepted to review an affiliated package submission, thank you for taking the time to do this!
Your review and identity will be public.
Reviewing a package involves assessing how well the package does in several areas, which we outline below. As a reviewer it is is expected that you review on these criteria, and it is sufficient to solely use these criteria . However, feel free to bring up any other aspect which you think is important.
The basic reviews follow pyOpenSci standards:
- Reviewer Guide is for you.
- Editor Guide is for the Astropy Editor working with you.
In addition to the above, here are some Astropy-specific guidelines:
#### Astropy-specific
- [ ] **Relevance to astronomy/astrophysics:**
- [ ] **Out of scope:** Not useful for astronomers, or specific to one project/collaboration. (This is a basis for rejection.)
- [ ] **Specialized package:** Useful to astronomers working in a very specific domain/field, or with a specific telescope instrument and usable not just by a single collaboration but any astronomers within that domain. Packages such as sncosmo fall into this category.
- [ ] **General package:** Package that is useful for astronomers across more than a single field/instrument/telescope. Packages such as astroquery or astroplan fall into this category.
- [ ] **Integration with Astropy ecosystem:**
- [ ] **No integration:** Does not use Astropy or other Astropy Affiliated packages anywhere where it should be possible, and/or uses other libraries instead, or unnecessarily duplicates functionality found in Astropy or other Astropy Affiliated packages. (This is a basis for rejection.)
- [ ] **Partial integration:** Makes an effort to use Astropy or other Astropy Affiliated packages in places, but still has other places where this could be done.
- [ ] **Good integration:** Uses Astropy or other Astropy Affiliated packages wherever possible. Where not, there are good reasons not to.For specific actionable items, reviewer or editor are free to open issues on the package repository directly and link them back to the application (this would be a GitHub issue in pyOpenSci software submission repository. If some of the issues are to justify a rejection, that must be made clear in the review.
When in doubt, please consult with Astropy Affiliated Package Editors.