Add JOSS paper for submission

[vahid-ahmadi]

Summary

• Adds paper.md and paper.bib for submission to the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS)
• Paper covers all 6 required JOSS sections: Summary, Statement of Need, State of the Field, Software Design, Research Impact Statement, and AI Usage Disclosure
• Cites adoption by 10 Downing Street, HM Treasury (Algorithmic Transparency Record), NIESR UK Living Standards Review 2025, INET Oxford (Seventh Carbon Budget), IEA reports, and House of Lords parliamentary debate
• Funded by the Nuffield Foundation

What is JOSS?

JOSS is a peer-reviewed open-access journal for research software. It publishes short papers (750–1,750 words) describing open-source software with research impact. There are no submission fees. The review process happens on GitHub via openjournals/joss-reviews. See the submission guide and paper format for full details.

JOSS requirements checklist

• OSI-approved open-source license (AGPL-3.0)
• Public repository with browsable source code
• Issue tracker readable without registration
• Public development history > 6 months
• Demonstrated research impact (government, academic, policy citations)
• Good open-source practices (CI, tests, docs, PRs, tagged releases)
• Iterative development over time
• paper.md with all 6 required sections
• paper.bib with BibTeX references
• AI Usage Disclosure
• Funding acknowledgement (Nuffield Foundation)
• ORCID IDs for all authors (see below)

Steps before submission

• ORCID IDs — Each author needs a real ORCID. Register for free at https://orcid.org/register (takes ~2 minutes, use personal email so it follows you across institutions). Update the 0000-0000-0000-0000 placeholders in paper.md:
  • Max Ghenis
  • Nikhil Woodruff
  • Vahid Ahmadi — 0009-0004-1093-6272
• All co-authors confirm agreement to be listed
• Review and approve paper text
• Merge this PR to main
• Submit at https://joss.theoj.org/papers/new with the repo URL
• Disclose conflicts of interest on the submission form (e.g., all authors employed by PolicyEngine)
• Note related publications on the submission form (NIESR report, No 10 Innovation Fellows work, IEA reports)

After submission

1. A JOSS editor will open a pre-review issue at joss-reviews
2. Two reviewers will be assigned; review happens via GitHub issues
3. Respond to reviewer feedback within 2 weeks, complete changes within 4–6 weeks
4. Upon acceptance: create a tagged release, deposit to Zenodo for a DOI, update the review thread

Test plan

• Verify paper.md renders correctly with JOSS preview tools
• Confirm all paper.bib references are valid and resolve correctly

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