Stingray Submission

[matteobachetti]

Submitting Author: Name @matteobachetti
All current maintainers: @dhuppenkothen @mgullik @jdswinbank @matteolucchini1
Package Name: Stingray
One-Line Description of Package: A spectral-timing software package for astrophysical X-ray (and other) data
Repository Link: https://github.com/stingraysoftware/stingray

Version submitted: 2.1
EiC: @cmarmo
Editor: @hamogu
Reviewer 1: @taldcroft
Reviewer 2: @masonng-astro
Archive:
JOSS DOI: 10.21105/joss.07389
Version accepted: 2.1
Date accepted (month/day/year): 10/01/2024

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Description

• Include a brief paragraph describing what your package does:

Stingray is a Python library for "spectral timing", i.e. time-series analysis techniques that can be used to study how variability changes or correlates between different energy bands/wavelengths. It is Astropy-affiliated, and with an ever growing user base now comprising hundreds of researchers around the globe.

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  • Data retrieval
  • Data extraction
  • Data processing/munging
  • Data deposition
  • Data validation and testing
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  • Scientific software wrappers
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• Geospatial
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This package is mostly focused on the analysis of new data from high-energy missions. We added data validation and testing because it can be used as a quick look tool to point out possible anomalies in observations (e.g. solar or other background flares).

• Who is the target audience and what are scientific applications of this package?

The target audience is principally researchers and students of X-ray and multi-wavelength astronomy.
This package fills a void for a free and open source (spectral-)timing package for X-ray astronomy. XRONOS, formerly maintained by HEASARC, is currently unmaintained, and the analysis of high-energy timeseries is done mostly with proprietary software or mission-specific packages. We provide a Python package that eases the learning curve for newcomers, also thanks to extensive tutorials based on Jupyter notebooks, and provides experts with a powerful, robust library for their analysis. We provide software to analyze astronomical time series and do a number of things, including periodicity searches, time lag calculations, covariance spectra, power spectral modeling.

• Are there other Python packages that accomplish the same thing? If so, how does yours differ?

Our package is arguably the most well-known Python package for X-ray spectral timing.

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#195

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[cmarmo]

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Editor comments

Stingray is in excellent form! 💪
Congratulations!
I am going to check the availability of our Astropy editors and we will be back to you shortly.

[cmarmo]

Hello @matteobachetti I am pleased to announce that @hamogu will take care of your submission as editor.
Thank you Moritz!
I'm wishing to all of you a nice review process! :)

[hamogu]

Editor response to review:

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Editor comments

👋 Hi @taldcroft and @masonng-astro! Thank you for volunteering to review
for pyOpenSci!

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Please get in touch with any questions or concerns! Your review is due:

Reviewers: Tom Aldcroft and Mason Ng
Due date: Sept 6th, 2024

[hamogu]

We have a previous JOSS paper describing the package. Is it acceptable to have a new paper, including the many improvements made in the last five years?

It's up to JOSS, not us, how exactly they handle that. Yo save everyone time, JOSS will generally accept our review as theirs, because there is really no need for a second set of reviewers that do essentially the same checks that our reviewers just did. However the final decision to accept into JOSS is up to JOSS.

So, I think there are two ways this can be done, at out choice:

• Either you contact JOSS and ask for their opinion. (In that case, I would pause this review until you hear back from them.)
• Or you write the paper.md as you would like to have it, and we review the code and paper as we normally do and pass it to JOSS once our review is done. (In that case, I would pause this review until you've written the paper.md so that our reviewers can actually review the paper.)

Option 2 is faster (you don't have to wait for the JOSS response first), but carries the risk that the JOSS editor decides not to publish it later.

Note that JOSS says: "we also review submissions that are significant contributions made to existing packages".
Based on this, I suggest option 2 (you add a 'paper.md` here before we review) and I will specifically instruct our reviewers to comment on if they judge the development in the last 5 years to be a "significant contribution".

[matteobachetti]

@hamogu we are working on the JOSS paper draft here: StingraySoftware/stingray#829
The text will not change much, we are working mostly on the author list and acknowledgements.
The new paper is paper2.md, and the bibliography joss2.bib (because we have the 2019 paper in the same directory)

[hamogu]

Just let me know when the paper is ready and I'll let the reviewers know to start their review. In the meantime, I'm emailing reviewers to find people to do the review when you are ready.

[matteobachetti]

@hamogu the paper is ready, but I'm still missing a couple OrcIDs and affiliations. Does it have to be merged or the link to the PR is sufficient?

[hamogu]

Just letting you know that I'm in the process of looking for reviewers; both I and some potential reviewers are on summer travel, but I'm hoping to get you two reviewers soon to get this started.

[hamogu]

Just letting you know that I'm still looking for reviewers. Seems that everyone is on vacation right now...

[matteobachetti]

Understandable 😅
No worries!

[hamogu]

👋 Hi @taldcroft and @masonng-astro!
Thanks for agreeing to do a review of stingray for us. Generic instructions (pre-review survey, etc.) are above: #201 (comment)

In addition, note that this package is also submitting to JOSS and JOSS will accept our review and not do a separate review. However, stingray already had a JOSS publication a few years ago. So, it would be very helpful to note in your review if you deem the new features added since then as new "substantial contribution" that merits a new JOSS publication. You can find the paper draft for JOSS in StingraySoftware/stingray#829

Please reach out to me if you have any questions!

[hamogu]

👋 Hi @taldcroft and @masonng-astro! I'm hoping to get your reviews for this package soon! If you have any problems or need help or guidance in how to do a review, please reach out to me any time!

[taldcroft]

@hamogu - sorry, this fell off my radar. Will do early next week.

[matteobachetti]

Thanks for the ongoing reviews!
FYI, I've started addressing comments on readme/docs at StingraySoftware/stingray#842

[taldcroft]

Package Review

Please check off boxes as applicable, and elaborate in comments below. Your review is not limited to these topics, as described in the reviewer guide

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    • Not included. I somewhat question the utility of this badge since it seems to rely
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    • Looks like Py 3.8 to 3.12 are tested, but I do not see this in the install docs.
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• Installation: Installation succeeds as documented.
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Final approval (post-review)

• The author has responded to my review and made changes to my satisfaction. I recommend approving this package.

Estimated hours spent reviewing: 5

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Review Comments

I am reviewing this package as an (inactive) astronomer and active Astropy developer.

From a scientific perspective it appears that the stingray package fills a distinct
need for modern open source Python-based X-ray spectral timing tools. It is being widely
used in the X-ray timing community, with 170 citations to the 2019 ApJ paper. In recent
years it is seeing around 35 citations per year.

From a software perspective this checks all the boxes (literally) for a package that
meets current standards for a well-developed, documented, and maintained package. The
test coverage is excellent.

I ran all the notebooks and found a couple of problems (documented as issues). This
highlights the need for StingraySoftware/stingray#802 to be
worked, but overall things are looking OK and those notebook issues are not a blocker
for accepting the package.

I opened one issue to document how to download the tutorial notebooks that form most of
the package functional documentation. This is a simple docs update and I would like to
see this done for accepting the package.

[matteobachetti]

Update:

• Responses to pyOpenSci review StingraySoftware/stingray#842 addresses issues with documentation and package infrastructure, including minimum Python versions, badges and so on (under review).
• Address PyOpenSci comments StingraySoftware/notebooks#103 addresses the issues with notebooks (ongoing)
• New JOSS paper draft StingraySoftware/stingray#829 addresses comments to the JOSS paper (ongoing)

[matteobachetti]

@masonng-astro I have a similar setup to yours (Macbook pro with M1 processor), but I couldn't reproduce your bugs 🆘

The failing test on unsorted data is particularly weird, as it does not seem to rely on any specific dependency other than the default ones. There is a vague chance that it is related to the numba installation, as I use numba to check for sortedness, but it should also revert to standard numpy if numba is not installed or it fails.

I could also install UltraNest without issues. I wonder if you have conflicting versions of some dependencies? From the list of libraries in your error, there seems to be some kind of clash between HEASOFT-installed libraries and the standard Python path. Is it possible?

[taldcroft]

FWIW as noted in my review, tests passed for me on Mac Silicon and Python 3.12. I created a fresh conda environment (using conda defaults channel) for Python 3.12 and then pip installed everything else.

[taldcroft]

With StingraySoftware/stingray#842 now merged, I have updated my review to recommend approving this package!

[hamogu]

@masonng-astro Could you have a look if your concerns have been resolved or if you can provide a more detailed look at why it fails? It seems that @matteobachetti tried to reproduce your failure, but failed to do so. Of course, we don't want to accept a failing package, but it's also hard to figure out what went wrong. 😕

Once you think it's ready to be accepted, please edit the post with your review and tick the box on "I recommend approving this package." and leave. short message here (GH will inform me when you post a new comment, but not when you edit an existing one).

[masonng-astro]

@masonng-astro I have a similar setup to yours (Macbook pro with M1 processor), but I couldn't reproduce your bugs 🆘

The failing test on unsorted data is particularly weird, as it does not seem to rely on any specific dependency other than the default ones. There is a vague chance that it is related to the numba installation, as I use numba to check for sortedness, but it should also revert to standard numpy if numba is not installed or it fails.

I could also install UltraNest without issues. I wonder if you have conflicting versions of some dependencies? From the list of libraries in your error, there seems to be some kind of clash between HEASOFT-installed libraries and the standard Python path. Is it possible?

Sorry for my late response - I did eventually manage to hunt down the issue and it boiled down to a weird esoteric mix of architectures in my Anaconda installation which I never encountered until now! Apologies for holding up the review. I'll go ahead and approve now. I did check everything else and all is good on my end!

[hamogu]

🎉 Stingray has been approved by pyOpenSci! Thank you @matteobachetti for submitting stingray and many thanks to @taldcroft and @masonng-astro for reviewing this package! 😸

Author Wrap Up Tasks

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[hamogu]

@matteobachetti We at pyOpenSci would love to highlight stingray in a blog post similar to what these packages have done: pandera, movingpandas (We have an md template that you could use as a guide when creating your post.)
but I know that you've written a lot about Stingray before, and this is certainly not a requirement!

I also want to invite all three of you to the PyOpenSci slack - there is a very active community that discusses best practices in packaging, testing , and administration of Python packages. Personally, I found a lot of those discussions very insightful and useful, thought I myself have never contributed by posting - I just use it as a resource to look at. If you'd like to join, let me know which email address I should invite!

[matteobachetti]

@hamogu I opened a PR with the badge, and filled in the form. Later on I will open the JOSS issue. Thanks a lot!

[matteobachetti]

@matteobachetti We at pyOpenSci would love to highlight stingray in a blog post similar to what these packages have done: pandera, movingpandas (We have an md template that you could use as a guide when creating your post.) but I know that you've written a lot about Stingray before, and this is certainly not a requirement!

I think it's a good idea, I have some matters to deal with in the next few weeks but I'll try to do it. Thanks!

I also want to invite all three of you to the PyOpenSci slack - there is a very active community that discusses best practices in packaging, testing , and administration of Python packages. Personally, I found a lot of those discussions very insightful and useful, thought I myself have never contributed by posting - I just use it as a resource to look at. If you'd like to join, let me know which email address I should invite!

Sent in private message!

[hamogu]

I see that there is a JOSS DOI now, so I've updated all the information and will close this issue. Thanks everyone!