[REVIEW]: Mesa 3: Agent-based modelling with Python in 2024

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @EwoutH (Ewout ter Hoeven)
Repository: https://github.com/projectmesa/mesa
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch): paper_2024
Version: v3.1
Editor: @gkthiruvathukal
Reviewers: @martibosch, @jofmi
Archive: Pending

Status

Status badge code:

HTML: <a href="https://joss.theoj.org/papers/0c0e31521267ed506b9f352cba409559"><img src="https://joss.theoj.org/papers/0c0e31521267ed506b9f352cba409559/status.svg"></a>
Markdown: [![status](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/0c0e31521267ed506b9f352cba409559/status.svg)](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/0c0e31521267ed506b9f352cba409559)

Reviewers and authors:

Please avoid lengthy details of difficulties in the review thread. Instead, please create a new issue in the target repository and link to those issues (especially acceptance-blockers) by leaving comments in the review thread below. (For completists: if the target issue tracker is also on GitHub, linking the review thread in the issue or vice versa will create corresponding breadcrumb trails in the link target.)

Reviewer instructions & questions

@martibosch & @jofmi, your review will be checklist based. Each of you will have a separate checklist that you should update when carrying out your review.
First of all you need to run this command in a separate comment to create the checklist:

@editorialbot generate my checklist

The reviewer guidelines are available here: https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reviewer_guidelines.html. Any questions/concerns please let @gkthiruvathukal know.

✨ Please start on your review when you are able, and be sure to complete your review in the next six weeks, at the very latest ✨

Checklists

📝 Checklist for @jofmi

[editorialbot]

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[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.98  T=0.15 s (1027.5 files/s, 178491.5 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          86           3392           3808           9905
Markdown                        35           1298             26           3429
Jupyter Notebook                 5              0           2145            752
YAML                            12             19             39            356
DOS Batch                        1             29              1            212
TeX                              2             14              0            157
make                             1             28              6            143
TOML                             1              9             17            127
Text                             3             16              0             69
JSON                             1              0              0             12
Dockerfile                       1              9             19              9
Bourne Shell                     1              1              0              7
INI                              1              0              0              2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                           150           4815           6061          15180
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Commit count by author:

   420	rht
   301	Ewout ter Hoeven
   284	jackiekazil
   120	David Masad
   115	Jan Kwakkel
   101	Corvince
    76	Jackie Kazil
    71	tpike3
    58	Tortar
    43	pre-commit-ci[bot]
    42	Taylor Mutch
    24	cauemello
    23	Dustin J. Mitchell
    22	Jeetu
    19	corvince
    17	ReblochonMasque
    16	Tom Pike
    13	Drewrey Lupton
    13	Jon Schiefelbein
    13	Wang Boyu
    12	SebastianoF
    12	Thomas Johnson
    11	dependabot[bot]
    10	Animesh Rawat
    10	Matt Davis
     8	James Arruda
     8	Nathan Miller
     8	Stephen Mubita
     7	Ankit Kumar
     7	Joe Dight
     7	gcallah
     7	ihopethiswillfi
     7	rlskoeser
     6	Achal Jain
     6	Heß
     6	Jessica Garson
     6	Spartan-71
     6	Steven MacLeod
     6	deepsource-autofix[bot]
     5	Dan Cunningham
     5	Daniel Chen
     5	Keith Richards
     5	Sascha Holzhauer
     5	Yannick Jadoul
     5	devforfu
     5	nissu99
     4	Ash Hoover
     4	Brian Russo
     4	Colin Maxwell
     4	DanielWeitzenfeld
     4	James Hovet
     4	Jangsea Park
     4	Max Orhai
     4	Nathan Verzemnieks
     4	Raúl Reguillo Carmona
     4	jess010
     4	jkerfs
     4	jonahaag
     3	AdamZh0u
     3	Benjamin Crane
     3	Bill Tucker
     3	Glenn Lehman
     3	ItsQuinnMoore
     3	Jatin Khilnani
     3	Jeremy Silver
     3	Keelan
     3	Martin Breuss
     3	Paul Gowder
     3	Yigit Guneli
     3	trickroll
     3	uec561
     2	Adam Zh0u
     2	Casper Smet
     2	Catherine Devlin
     2	Daniel Furman
     2	David
     2	David Balash
     2	Florian Kohrt
     2	Gonçalo Pascoal
     2	Jeremy Foote
     2	Luke Meyers
     2	Mat-pa
     2	Rebecca Sutton Koeser
     2	Ron Dotsch
     2	Sahil Chhoker
     2	Simon Podhajsky
     2	Victor Norman
     2	Vincent Hess
     2	federico
     2	houssam7737
     1	A Lee
     1	Abdallah Akrab
     1	Aditya Tiwari
     1	Alex
     1	Allen Lee
     1	Bubu
     1	Charlie Roe
     1	Christopher Akiki
     1	DarshPareek
     1	Deborah Duong
     1	Dev Test
     1	Edward Betts
     1	Eleonore9
     1	EwoutH
     1	Francis dela Cruz
     1	Giacomo Ravaioli
     1	Grace Z
     1	Houssam Kherraz
     1	Ikko Eltociear Ashimine
     1	J. Fernando Sánchez
     1	Jack at Omen Apps
     1	Jacob Hwang
     1	James Paterson
     1	Jared Norman
     1	Jisk Attema
     1	JoeHelbing
     1	Josiah Vinson
     1	LizaRoelofsen
     1	Luca Verginer
     1	LuciaBaldassini
     1	Maarten van der Sande
     1	Maarten-vd-Sande
     1	Majd Al-Shihabi
     1	Matt Wiens
     1	Megan Sosey
     1	Nick Aldershof
     1	Nouamane Tazi
     1	Oliver Katz
     1	Oren Bochman
     1	Paolo Gervasoni Vila
     1	Rebecca Davidsson
     1	Robert Hopkins
     1	Sahil Singh
     1	Sangamesh Itagi
     1	Sebastian Ortan
     1	Shengyu Huang
     1	Sherman
     1	Shubhanshu Mishra
     1	Sophia Wassermann
     1	Spencer Williams
     1	Steffen Rehberg
     1	Stephen Mann
     1	Taylor Mitchell
     1	Valentina Kiryushkina
     1	Vítor Fróis
     1	Wouter
     1	WouterVrielink
     1	Yasin Amini
     1	alba ramos
     1	clumdee
     1	electric-souperman
     1	gary
     1	gboeing
     1	jurreaserna
     1	kennethells
     1	logeaux
     1	maskarb
     1	nvrzm
     1	puer-robustus
     1	sahusiddharth
     1	schand5
     1	subhamonsey
     1	tcdejong
     1	vhess
     1	werwty

[editorialbot]

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

✅ OK DOIs

- 10.1063/1.1571309 is OK
- 10.2307/134812 is OK
- 10.25080/Majora-7b98e3ed-009 is OK
- 10.1007/978-3-030-61255-9_30 is OK
- 10.1145/3557989.3566157 is OK
- 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120296 is OK
- 10.1016/j.trd.2020.102455 is OK
- 10.1016/j.enbuild.2020.109763 is OK
- 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.08.024 is OK
- 10.1016/j.eswa.2022.116604 is OK
- 10.1016/j.elerap.2022.101195 is OK
- 10.1073/pnas.2215675120 is OK

🟡 SKIP DOIs

- No DOI given, and none found for title: Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from ...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Agent-based computational models and generative so...

❌ MISSING DOIs

- None

❌ INVALID DOIs

- None

[editorialbot]

Paper file info:

📄 Wordcount for paper.md is 1660

✅ The paper includes a Statement of need section

[editorialbot]

License info:

✅ License found: Apache License 2.0 (Valid open source OSI approved license)

[editorialbot]

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

[jofmi]

Review checklist for @jofmi

Conflict of interest

• I confirm that I have read the JOSS conflict of interest (COI) policy and that: I have no COIs with reviewing this work or that any perceived COIs have been waived by JOSS for the purpose of this review.

Code of Conduct

• I confirm that I read and will adhere to the JOSS code of conduct.

General checks

• Repository: Is the source code for this software available at the https://github.com/projectmesa/mesa?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE or COPYING file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author (@EwoutH) made major contributions to the software? Does the full list of paper authors seem appropriate and complete?
• Substantial scholarly effort: Does this submission meet the scope eligibility described in the JOSS guidelines
• Data sharing: If the paper contains original data, data are accessible to the reviewers. If the paper contains no original data, please check this item.
• Reproducibility: If the paper contains original results, results are entirely reproducible by reviewers. If the paper contains no original results, please check this item.
• Human and animal research: If the paper contains original data research on humans subjects or animals, does it comply with JOSS's human participants research policy and/or animal research policy? If the paper contains no such data, please check this item.

Functionality

• Installation: Does installation proceed as outlined in the documentation?
• Functionality: Have the functional claims of the software been confirmed?
• Performance: If there are any performance claims of the software, have they been confirmed? (If there are no claims, please check off this item.)

Documentation

• A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• Installation instructions: Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies? Ideally these should be handled with an automated package management solution.
• Example usage: Do the authors include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).
• Functionality documentation: Is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level (e.g., API method documentation)?
• Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?
• Community guidelines: Are there clear guidelines for third parties wishing to 1. Contribute to the software 2. Report issues or problems with the software 3. Seek support

Software paper

• Summary: Has a clear description of the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience been provided?
• A statement of need: Does the paper have a section titled 'Statement of need' that clearly states what problems the software is designed to solve, who the target audience is, and its relation to other work?
• State of the field: Do the authors describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages?
• Quality of writing: Is the paper well written (i.e., it does not require editing for structure, language, or writing quality)?
• References: Is the list of references complete, and is everything cited appropriately that should be cited (e.g., papers, datasets, software)? Do references in the text use the proper citation syntax?

[EwoutH]

@martibosch @jofmi thanks for picking up the review! Some resources:

• The paper branch
• Our tracking issue: Tracking issue: JOSS paper projectmesa/mesa#2559

If you need anything else, let me know!