Introduction to Publication of Software in the Wildlife Society Bulletin

Michael D. Samuel (1988. Wildlife Society Bulletin 16:104) outlined the purpose of the Wildlife Society Computer Software Exchange (CSE) and initial guidance on contributing software articles.

"The unique objective of the CSE is to establish a process of peer review for wildlife software. This will ensure that contributions available from the Software Retrieval Database have undergone a review that considers the significance of the software, documentation format, software engineering, ease of use, and adequate testing. Contributors to CSE will send source code, executable files, example input files, a reference manual, and an article that describes the application. If after peer review, the contribution is accepted for the Software Retrieval Database, the article will be published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin."

Eric A. Rexstad (1992. Wildlife Society Bulletin 20:457) continued the discussion on motivation and intent of the CSE. Rexstad (1992) also provided guidelines to authors for submission of software-related material to the Wildlife Society Bulletin. Contributors can submit three types of software articles:

  1. Software Availability articles which describe major feature of submitted software.
  2. Reviews of existing software. For example, critical review of a class of software that computes home range analysis, statistical analysis, habitat preference, or estimates of population parameters (survival, recruitment, density).
  3. Short contributions to a Reader's Forum which serve as an outlet for opinion on computational aspects of wildlife ecology and management.

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Most recent revision 5 January 01 jlw