[REVIEW]: NEMSEER: A Python package for downloading and handling historical National Electricity Market forecast data produced by the Australian Energy Market Operator

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @prakaa (Abhijith Prakash)
Repository: https://github.com/UNSW-CEEM/NEMSEER
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch): joss-paper
Version: v1.0.7
Editor: @arfon
Reviewers: @mfleschutz, @amandadsmith
Archive: 10.5281/zenodo.10162614

Status

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Markdown: [![status](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/5ba29c4a5cfec8721c876587699ab719/status.svg)](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/5ba29c4a5cfec8721c876587699ab719)

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Reviewer instructions & questions

@mfleschutz & @amandadsmith, your review will be checklist based. Each of you will have a separate checklist that you should update when carrying out your review.
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✨ 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 @mfleschutz

📝 Checklist for @amandadsmith

[editorialbot]

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[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.88  T=0.37 s (174.1 files/s, 27668.1 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          17            495            856           2945
Jupyter Notebook                 3              0           1857           1310
Markdown                        17            377              0           1006
HTML                            19              0              0            722
YAML                             4             30             53            178
TeX                              1             18              0            163
TOML                             1             14             20             72
DOS Batch                        1              8              1             26
make                             1              4              7              9
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            64            946           2794           6431
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


gitinspector failed to run statistical information for the repository

[editorialbot]

Wordcount for paper.md is 968

[editorialbot]

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

OK DOIs

- 10/gcj9vc is OK
- 10.5334/jors.148 is OK
- 10.5281/zenodo.7697295 is OK
- 10.5281/zenodo.7467074 is OK
- 10.1016/j.joule.2022.01.004 is OK
- 10.25080/Majora-92bf1922-00a is OK
- 10.5281/zenodo.3509134 is OK

MISSING DOIs

- 10.4337/9781788979955.00017 may be a valid DOI for title: The Evolution of the European Model for Electricity Markets

INVALID DOIs

- None

[arfon]

@mfleschutz, @amandadsmith This is the review thread for the paper. All of our communications will happen here from now on.

Please read the "Reviewer instructions & questions" in the first comment above. Please create your checklist typing:

@editorialbot generate my checklist

As you go over the submission, please check any items that you feel have been satisfied. There are also links to the JOSS reviewer guidelines.

The JOSS review is different from most other journals. Our goal is to work with the authors to help them meet our criteria instead of merely passing judgment on the submission. As such, the reviewers are encouraged to submit issues and pull requests on the software repository. When doing so, please mention https://github.com/openjournals/joss-reviews/issues/5883 so that a link is created to this thread (and I can keep an eye on what is happening). Please also feel free to comment and ask questions on this thread. In my experience, it is better to post comments/questions/suggestions as you come across them instead of waiting until you've reviewed the entire package.

We aim for the review process to be completed within about 4-6 weeks but please make a start well ahead of this as JOSS reviews are by their nature iterative and any early feedback you may be able to provide to the author will be very helpful in meeting this schedule.

[editorialbot]

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

[mfleschutz]

Review checklist for @mfleschutz

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/UNSW-CEEM/NEMSEER?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author (@prakaa) 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?

[amandadsmith]

Review checklist for @amandadsmith

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/UNSW-CEEM/NEMSEER?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author (@prakaa) 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?

[mfleschutz]

So I am starting my proper review.

First thing is noticed when reading through the documentation:

In https://nemseer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/visualising_p5min_demand_forecasts.html there are a lot of annoying warnings:

WARNING: findfont: Generic family 'sans-serif' not found because none of the following families were found: Source Sans 3, Helvetica, Computer Modern Sans Serif, Avant Garde, sans-serif

@prakaa, can you get rid of them?

[mfleschutz]

• @prakaa, some of the References in the JOSS paper are no books but have no URL or DOI.

[mfleschutz]

• In the paper, you do not mention, if there is a similar package out there. This would help to stress the statement of need.
• If there are similar packages, please describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages(State of the field).

[mfleschutz]

I use a MacBook Pro M1 to test. When running the p5min_demand_forecast_error_2021.ipynb the download_raw_data works. However, calculating the forecast_error (in the cell containing the line forecast_error = pd.concat(results, axis=0)) throws the following error multiple times, so I stopped the calculation:

multiprocessing/process.py", line 108, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/pool.py", line 114, in worker
    task = get()
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/queues.py", line 368, in get
    return _ForkingPickler.loads(res)
AttributeError: Can't get attribute 'calculate_p5min_demand_forecast_error_simpler' on <module '__main__' (built-in)>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/process.py", line 315, in _bootstrap
    self.run()
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/process.py", line 108, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)

[prakaa]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

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

[prakaa]

Hi @mfleschutz,

Thanks very much for taking the time to review the package and the paper. I've made changes based on your comments:

---

So I am starting my proper review.

First thing is noticed when reading through the documentation:

In https://nemseer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples/visualising_p5min_demand_forecasts.html there are a lot of annoying warnings:

WARNING: findfont: Generic family 'sans-serif' not found because none of the following families were found: Source Sans 3, Helvetica, Computer Modern Sans Serif, Avant Garde, sans-serif

@prakaa, can you get rid of them?

These should no longer be in that example. Sorry about that.

---

• @prakaa, some of the References in the JOSS paper are no books but have no URL or DOI.

Proof (as in comment above) should now have URLs/DOIs for all references

---

• In the paper, you do not mention, if there is a similar package out there. This would help to stress the statement of need.

  • If there are similar packages, please describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages(State of the field).

I have added to the paragraph that follows how NEMSEER solves the issues with accessing AEMO forecast data. That paragraph now reads:

Though existing software solutions (e.g. NemSight, ez2view and NEOpoint) can provide access
to some of the same data, most lack a programmatic interface useful for deeper analysis and
all are proprietary commercial software. Furthermore, NEMSEER adds significant value to users
interested in deeper analysis through its documentation. It contains examples showing how
users can analyse demand forecast errors and energy price convergence using pre-dispatch
demand and price forecast data (obtained using NEMSEER) and historical actual NEM system
and market data (obtained using NEMOSIS) (Gorman et al., 2018). Figure 1 is an output of
one such example.

---

I use a MacBook Pro M1 to test. When running the p5min_demand_forecast_error_2021.ipynb the download_raw_data works. However, calculating the forecast_error (in the cell containing the line forecast_error = pd.concat(results, axis=0)) throws the following error multiple times, so I stopped the calculation:

multiprocessing/process.py", line 108, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/pool.py", line 114, in worker
    task = get()
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/queues.py", line 368, in get
    return _ForkingPickler.loads(res)
AttributeError: Can't get attribute 'calculate_p5min_demand_forecast_error_simpler' on <module '__main__' (built-in)>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/process.py", line 315, in _bootstrap
    self.run()
  File ".../python3.9/multiprocessing/process.py", line 108, in run
    self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs)

I had originally provided two methods for calculating demand forecast errors. This error is related to the method that uses xarray, pandas and multiprocessing. However, this is a method that many users are unlikely to use to calculate errors across a year (it takes many hours to complete). So I've removed that method, and now only have one method. I have tested this and it works for me. Could you please run the new Jupyter notebook? Note that it write HTML plots to file

[arfon]

👋 @amandadsmith – how are you getting on with your review?

[amandadsmith]

@arfon Thank you for the reminder. So sorry to the authors! I dropped the ball on this one but will work on it in the next 2 days

[amandadsmith]

Regarding Reproducibility: The review checklist asks that "If the paper contains original results, results are entirely reproducible by reviewers." It looks like NEMOSIS would be required to reproduce Fig. 1 in the paper. I'm not interested in downloading another package and reproducing it, but not sure whether it's appropriate to check this one off.

EDITED to add: It seems that the examples in readthedocs also rely on NEMOSIS. If it's expected that the two are always used together, I would mention this in the installation instructions or put a link to NEMOSIS readme on the NEMSEER readme. (If not, can you provide examples demonstrating NEMSEER's functionality alone?)

[amandadsmith]

Regarding Community guidelines: I'm not sure if there is any guidance provided for "third parties wishing to ... 3) Seek support"

[amandadsmith]

Regarding References: I think the names got mixed up in this one: Hoyer, S., & Joseph, H. (2017). Xarray: N-D labeled arrays and datasets in python. Journal of Open Research Software, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/jors.148

[amandadsmith]

Regarding documentation: The quick start guide says that "AEMO’s MMS Data Model reports describe tables and columns that are available via nemseer." However, the link doesn't directly show information related to the tables--each package in the left sidebar seems to have a list of tables, but it's a lot to browse. If I wanted to know more about e.g. 'CASESOLUTION' would I need to know the package that contains it?

[amandadsmith]

Also might be nice to explain here that the time period is considered as month ending, and will download a file for the entire month corresponding to a given time stamp.

e.g. I queried:
nemseer.download_raw_data(forecast_type="STPASA", tables="CASESOLUTION", raw_cache = raw_cache, forecasted_start="2010/01/01 00:00", forecasted_end="2010/01/31 11:30", keep_csv=True)

...and I expected to get one parquet file, one csv file, but got two of each and it just took me a minute to realize why.

[amandadsmith]

@prakaa @arfon I've done my review. Seems like this package could save other researchers a lot of time! My remaining items are minor--please see comments above and notify when resolved, and I will get back to the checklist ASAP. Thanks for your patience and sorry again for the delay on my end.

[mfleschutz]

I also finished my review. NEMSEER is a useful and well-documented piece of software with a clear contribution.
@prakaa thanks for your work. @arfon thanks for overseeing this review process.

[arfon]

@arfon is the DOI above OK? Please let me know if I need to do anything else.

Yeah, all good. Thanks for the ping. I'm afraid I got a little behind on my JOSS editorial duties 😅

[arfon]

@editorialbot set v1.0.7 as archive

[editorialbot]

Done! archive is now v1.0.7

[arfon]

@editorialbot recommend-accept

[editorialbot]

Attempting dry run of processing paper acceptance...

[editorialbot]

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

OK DOIs

- 10.1093/oxrep/grx041 is OK
- 10.5334/jors.148 is OK
- 10.5281/zenodo.7697295 is OK
- 10.5281/zenodo.7467074 is OK
- 10.1016/j.joule.2022.01.004 is OK
- 10.25080/Majora-92bf1922-00a is OK
- 10.5281/zenodo.3509134 is OK
- 10.4337/9781788979955.00017 is OK

MISSING DOIs

- None

INVALID DOIs

- None

[editorialbot]

👋 @openjournals/pe-eics, this paper is ready to be accepted and published.

Check final proof 👉📄 Download article

If the paper PDF and the deposit XML files look good in openjournals/joss-papers#4823, then you can now move forward with accepting the submission by compiling again with the command @editorialbot accept

[arfon]

@editorialbot accept

[editorialbot]

Doing it live! Attempting automated processing of paper acceptance...

[editorialbot]

Ensure proper citation by uploading a plain text CITATION.cff file to the default branch of your repository.

If using GitHub, a Cite this repository menu will appear in the About section, containing both APA and BibTeX formats. When exported to Zotero using a browser plugin, Zotero will automatically create an entry using the information contained in the .cff file.

You can copy the contents for your CITATION.cff file here:

CITATION.cff

cff-version: "1.2.0"
authors:
- family-names: Prakash
  given-names: Abhijith
  orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2945-4757"
- family-names: Bruce
  given-names: Anna
  orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1820-4039"
- family-names: MacGill
  given-names: Iain
  orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9587-6835"
contact:
- family-names: Prakash
  given-names: Abhijith
  orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2945-4757"
doi: v1.0.7
message: If you use this software, please cite our article in the
  Journal of Open Source Software.
preferred-citation:
  authors:
  - family-names: Prakash
    given-names: Abhijith
    orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2945-4757"
  - family-names: Bruce
    given-names: Anna
    orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1820-4039"
  - family-names: MacGill
    given-names: Iain
    orcid: "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9587-6835"
  date-published: 2023-12-09
  doi: 10.21105/joss.05883
  issn: 2475-9066
  issue: 92
  journal: Journal of Open Source Software
  publisher:
    name: Open Journals
  start: 5883
  title: "NEMSEER: A Python package for downloading and handling
    historical National Electricity Market forecast data produced by the
    Australian Energy Market Operator"
  type: article
  url: "https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.05883"
  volume: 8
title: "NEMSEER: A Python package for downloading and handling
  historical National Electricity Market forecast data produced by the
  Australian Energy Market Operator"

If the repository is not hosted on GitHub, a .cff file can still be uploaded to set your preferred citation. Users will be able to manually copy and paste the citation.

Find more information on .cff files here and here.

[editorialbot]

🐘🐘🐘 👉 Toot for this paper 👈 🐘🐘🐘

[editorialbot]

🚨🚨🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL, YOU HAVE JUST ACCEPTED A PAPER INTO JOSS! 🚨🚨🚨

Here's what you must now do:

0. Check final PDF and Crossref metadata that was deposited 👉 Creating pull request for 10.21105.joss.05883 joss-papers#4824
1. Wait five minutes, then verify that the paper DOI resolves https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.05883
2. If everything looks good, then close this review issue.
3. Party like you just published a paper! 🎉🌈🦄💃👻🤘

Any issues? Notify your editorial technical team...

[arfon]

@mfleschutz, @amandadsmith – many thanks for your reviews here! JOSS relies upon the volunteer effort of people like you and we simply wouldn't be able to do this without you ✨

@prakaa – your paper is now accepted and published in JOSS ⚡🚀💥

[editorialbot]

🎉🎉🎉 Congratulations on your paper acceptance! 🎉🎉🎉

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[xuanxu]

Hey @arfon, the values for version and archive are incorrect, they should be set to v1.0.7 and 10.5281/zenodo.10162614 and then reaccept the paper. Can you take care of this?

As reported here by @sdruskat

[arfon]

@editorialbot set 10.5281/zenodo.10162614 as archive

[editorialbot]

Done! archive is now 10.5281/zenodo.10162614

[arfon]

@editorialbot set v1.0.7 as version

[editorialbot]

Done! version is now v1.0.7

[arfon]

@editorialbot reaccept

[editorialbot]

Rebuilding paper!

[editorialbot]

🌈 Paper updated!

New PDF and metadata files 👉 openjournals/joss-papers#5236