Newsletter on rOpenSci - open tools for open science

rOpenSci News Digest, March 2026

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci Dev Guide 1.0.0: Trilingual and Improved

rOpenSci Software Peer Review’s guidance is gathered in an online book that keeps improving! It is now available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Read more in the release announcement

rOpenSci News Digest, February 2026

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Strong Engagement in the Champions Program Call

The Champions Program call closed on February 23, and the response was fantastic. We received 81 Champion and 14 Mentor applications from 23 countries, with 74% of applicants proposing to develop a new package. We’re now kicking off the selection process, starting with mentors so they can support the evaluation of Champion proposals. Confirmation emails have already been sent to all applicants. Thank you to everyone who applied!

rOpenSci News Digest, January 2026

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Open call for the rOpenSci Champions Program 2026!

We are pleased to announce the opening of a new call for applications for the rOpenSci Champions Program in Spanish, which will begin in 2026. We are accepting applications for both the roles of Champion as well as Mentor. The application deadline is February 20, 2026.

rOpenSci News Digest, December 2025

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci at LatinR

We proudly continued supporting LatinR as a community partner in 2025. Here we share a list of resources and recordings for the tutorials and talks delivered by our staff and community memebers at LatinR. Discover more on the LatinR YouTube channel.

rOpenSci News Digest, November 2025

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci at LatinR

We’re excited to continue supporting LatinR as a community partner in 2025. Registration is now open for the free LatinR Conference, bringing together researchers, developers, and open science advocates from across the region.

rOpenSci News Digest, October 2025

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

2025-11-06 Community call: Graceful Internet Packages

Join us for our next Community Call, “Graceful Internet Packages”, on Thursday, 06 November 2025 at 15:00 UTC featuring Matthias Grenié, Tan Ho, and Salix Dubois. In this session, we’ll explore how to design and maintain R packages that interact with online data sources. Our speakers will share practical lessons, examples, and best practices to help R package developers create reliable packages.

rOpenSci News Digest, September 2025

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

10 quick tips for making your software outlive your job

Our community manager Yanina Bellini Saibene participated in the paper “10 quick tips for making your software outlive your job”.

rOpenSci News Digest, August 2025

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Community call: “R-multiverse: a new way to publish R packages”

On Monday, 29 September 2025 14:00 UTC, we’ll host a community call about the R-multiverse, starring Will Landau!

R-multiverse is a new dual repository for R packages, based on infrastructure from R-universe and GitHub. We would like to invite the developer community to contribute packages.

rOpenSci News Digest, July 2025

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Open Science with a Latin American Identity: Meet the New Cohort of the rOpenSci Champions Program

We’re very excited to introduce the new rOpenSci Champions! This cohort will participate in the program and carry out their work in Spanish, allowing us to continue strengthening the open science and research software development community in this language. We’re excited about the projects they’ll be developing, which tackle real-world challenges across diverse disciplines and regions of Latin America.

rOpenSci News Digest, June 2025

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Farewell to software review editor Julia Gustavsen

This month we say farewell to Software Peer-Review Editor Julia Gustavsen. Julia has been an essential member of the rOpenSci peer-review team for more than 10 years, since before we had an editorial board, and before we even called it peer review! Julia was one of rOpenSci’s original reviewers as we figured out how to transform from a team publishing our in-house developed tools to a broader, community-driven ecosystem. Her early reviews were a model for the careful, helpful, non-confrontational style that has set the tone for our approach. We were lucky to have her join as an editor in 2020. She has expertly guided many authors and reviewers through the peer-review process, served as Editor in Chief, and been a pleasure to have as colleague making the process better, smoother, and more valuable to our community. Thanks Julia for your service!

rOpenSci News Digest, May 2025

Mon, 26 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Help us maintain {pkgcheck}!

You might know of our {pkgcheck} system used for our automated package checks, and for your own stand-alone and GitHub-action usage on any package. We are seeking co-maintainers for the {pkgcheck} package which powers this system. In particular, we have several ideas for additional checks in current repo issues. We would like volunteers to attend an online get-together for us to coach you on how to implement new checks, and so to help you get involved in maintaining and further developing our checking system. If you’re interested and already part of the rOpenSci Slack, please join our dedicated #pkgcheck channel, otherwise email mark@ropensci.org.

rOpenSci News Digest, April 2025

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Event: Career Paths for U.S. Federal Data Scientists

rOpenSci and Openscapes are lucky to have as members many U.S. federal employees who enrich our work and community. In a time of great uncertainty for so many government workers, we want to support our members who are considering their next career steps.

rOpenSci News Digest, March 2025

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci Champions Program 2025 In Spanish: Apply before April 30th!

We have great news: The call for applications to be part of the new cohort of our 2025 Program is now open! And for the first time it will be in Spanish!

rOpenSci News Digest, February 2025

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Open Science and Open Source only with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Including all of humanity is and always will be at the heart of open science. Read more about our mission in our blog post.

rOpenSci News Digest, January 2025

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci 2024 Highlights and what comes next in 2025

In this blog post, the rOpenSci Team shares the highlights of 2024 and what come next in 2025. Read the full story for details about our project’s progress and activities, from R-Universe, our software peer review system, to the champions program and the multilingual project to the great work of our community. We are excited to continue building an open science for all in 2025.

rOpenSci News Digest, December 2024

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

R-Universe Named an R Consortium Top-Level Project

We are excited to announce that R-Universe has been named the R Consortium’s newest Top-Level Project! We’re glad to be in the company of community and infrastructure projects that have been designated critical to the R Ecosystem, such as R-hub, DBI, R-Ladies, and the R User Group program, and we are grateful for the support of the R Consortium and its Infrastructure Steering Committee (ISC).

rOpenSci News Digest, November 2024

Fri, 29 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Looking for Maintainers to Support First-Time Contributors

Now open to non-rOpenSci package maintainers!

Making your first contribution to Open Source can be both empowering and intimidating. As such, we’re exited to announce a special series of activities to support first-time contributors! 🎉

rOpenSci News Digest, October 2024

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Fostering open science in Latin America: CZI awards funds for sustainable research software development

Exciting News! The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has awarded rOpenSci a new grant to foster sustainable scientific software as a pillar of Open Science in Latin America by building capacity and community. With this $340K grant, we’re planning to launch a Spanish-language version of our Champions Program, along with other new initiatives to make sustainable software development more accessible to researchers across the region. Read more in our announcement.

rOpenSci News Digest, September 2024

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Community call recording: Navigating the R ecosystem using R-universe

Video and resources.

Learn more about R-Universe and how you can use it to improve your R package development workflow.

rOpenSci News Digest, August 2024

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Community call: Navigating the R ecosystem using R-Universe!

On Tuesday, 24 September 2024 16:00 UTC (no RSVP needed), join us to learn more about R-Universe and how you can use it to improve your R package development workflow.

rOpenSci News Digest, July 2024

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Announcing New Software Peer Review Editors: Beatriz Milz and Margaret Siple

We are excited to welcome Beatriz Milz and Margaret Siple to our team of Associate Editors for rOpenSci Software Peer Review. They join Laura DeCicco, Julia Gustavsen, Anna Krystalli, Mauro Lepore, Noam Ross, Maëlle Salmon, Emily Riederer, Adam Sparks, and Jeff Hollister.

rOpenSci News Digest, June 2024

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci takes over maintenance of the {goodpractice} package

The {goodpractice} package was started by Gábor Csárdi in 2016 to auto-magically provide advice on good practices for your own R package. rOpenSci’s Dev Guide has recommended using it from the first day we started writing it in 2018. The package is now a central part of our own internal {pkgcheck} system, which is run automatically on all new submissions, and we recommend that all authors use our ‘pkgcheck-action’ GitHub action, which also runs {goodpractice}.

rOpenSci News Digest, May 2024

Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci in the Research Organization Registry

rOpenSci was added to the Research Organization Registry (ROR) in its latest release. The ROR is a global, community-led registry of open persistent identifiers for research organizations. ROR IDs help link and disambiguate metadata about organizations in the scholarly record, much like DOIs and ORCiDs do for manuscripts and researchers. Linked metadata is rOpenSci’s love language ❤️ ! Find us at https://ror.org/019jywm96.

rOpenSci News Digest, April 2024

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Coworking

Read all about coworking!

Join us for social coworking & office hours monthly on first Tuesdays! Hosted by Steffi LaZerte and various community hosts. Everyone welcome. No RSVP needed. Consult our Events page to find your local time and how to join.

rOpenSci News Digest, March 2024

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Leadership changes at rOpenSci

After 13 years at the helm of rOpenSci, our founding executive director Karthik Ram is stepping down. Noam Ross, rOpenSci’s current lead for peer review, will be our new Executive Director.
Karthik will remain a key advisor to rOpenSci. We thank him for his years of leadership and service to the community!

rOpenSci News Digest, February 2024

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci 2023 Code of Conduct Transparency Report

Transparency reports are intended to help the community understand what kind of Code of Conduct incidents we receive reports about annually and how the Code of Conduct team responds, always preserving the privacy of the people who experience or report incidents.

rOpenSci News Digest, January 2024

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

R-Universe

The R-Universe now builds MacOS ARM64 binaries for use on Apple Silicon (aka M1/M2/M3) systems!

Find out more in the related tech note.

Coworking

Read all about coworking in our recent post!

rOpenSci News Digest, December 2023

Fri, 22 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Reminder about giving season: consider donating to rOpenSci

This Giving Season consider donating to rOpenSci to support our mission of empowering Open Science.

Sustaining an open project with quality infrastructure freely accessible to the global and diverse community of R software users, research software developers, and engineers requires many different resources. Our organization’s ongoing costs are supported by grants and donations from individuals and organizations which share our vision and mission.

rOpenSci News Digest, November 2023

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Giving season: consider donating to rOpenSci

This Giving Season consider donating to rOpenSci to support our mission of empowering Open Science.

rOpenSci News Digest, October 2023

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Help us translate our dev guide to Portuguese

Since last year we started the translation and localization of our Spanish version of our comprehensive guide to software development. We have a first version in Spanish and now, thanks to the R Community initiative, we are working on the Portuguese version.

rOpenSci News Digest, September 2023

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

WIP: WebAssembly support in R-universe!

Thanks to some help from George Stagg, we added experimental support for building WebAssembly binary packages. This makes it possible to install packages in webr, directly from the R-universe.

rOpenSci News Digest, August 2023

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Open Call for rOpenSci Champions Program Applications!

Still open: our call for the second cohort of Champions and Mentors for the rOpenSci Champions Program 🎉 !

This 12-month-long program will continue to support our goal of identifying, recognizing, and rewarding passionate community members who help the community grow and improve. The activities include cohort-based training, project development, and personal mentorship.

rOpenSci News Digest, July 2023

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Open Call for rOpenSci Champions Program Applications!

We are pleased to open the call for the second cohort of Champions and Mentors for the rOpenSci Champions Program 🎉 !

rOpenSci News Digest, June 2023

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Meeting the stars of the R-universe: PEcAn, an Open Source Project to Take Care of the Planet

Knowing our community’s stories helps us to learn about the people behind our software, brings us closer and offers us new opportunities. To share some of these community stories, we created the rOpenSci interview series “Meeting the stars of the R-Universe”.

rOpenSci News Digest, May 2023

Fri, 19 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Statistical software review updates

We are very happy to welcome Jouni Helske to the editorial team for statistical software review. Jouni jumped straight in to act as editor for the fwildclusterboot submission, an exciting first extension of our system beyond R alone to include functions in the Julia language. We have so far approved eight packages, five of which have a silver badge, and three gold, with two further packages currently under review.

rOpenSci News Digest, April 2023

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Meeting the stars of the R-universe: Athanasia Monika Mowinckel

rOpenSci News Digest, March 2023

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Meeting the stars of the R-universe: Sébastien Rochette

rOpenSci News Digest, February 2023

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

R-universe improvements!

We have changed the preferred git repo name where you host your packages.json registry for R-universe, see our post New preferred repo name for r-universe registries. We now recommend to use the full lowercase name of your R-universe domain as the repo name, for instance TileDB-Inc/tiledb-inc.r-universe.dev.

rOpenSci News Digest, January 2023

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

{targets} in Action Community Call

Tuesday, 31 January 2023 20:00 UTC / Tuesday, 31 January 2023 15:00 EST / Wednesday, 1st February 07:00 AEDT.

The {targets} package is a pipeline tool for Statistics and data science in R. With {targets}, you can maintain a reproducible workflow without repeating yourself. {targets} learns how your pipeline fits together, skips costly runtime for tasks that are already up to date, runs only the necessary computation, supports implicit parallel computing, abstracts files as R objects, and shows tangible evidence that the results match the underlying code and data.

rOpenSci News Digest, December 2022

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

One-page HTML package manuals on R-universe!

We have recently started building HTML reference manuals for each package in the R-universe! For packages that have had an update in the past 3 weeks, the reference manual is now linked from the package homepage on R-universe.dev. All packages in the R-universe are rebuilt at least once per month, so soon all packages should have an online HTML manual. You can also find reference manuals for base-R packages.

rOpenSci News Digest, November 2022

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Multilingual Publishing

Open Source and Open Science are global movements, but most of their material and resources are published in English, meaning non-English speakers face a significant barrier to being part of these movements.
Publishing multilingual resources can lower these barriers by increasing access to knowledge, which helps democratize access to quality resources, and therefore increases the potential for contributing to software and open science projects.

rOpenSci News Digest, October 2022

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci Champions Program: call for Champions and call for Mentors

The rOpenSci Champions Program is part of a series of activities and projects we are carrying out to ensure our research software serves everyone in our communities. That is why this program focuses on people who belong to groups that are historically and systematically excluded from the open software and research software communities and who are interested in contributing to rOpenSci and the broader open source and research software communities.

rOpenSci News Digest, September 2022

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

We are thrilled to launch our Champions program!

rOpenSci Champions Program is part of a series of activities and projects we are carrying out to ensure our research software serves everyone in our communities. That is why this program focuses on people who belong to groups that are historically and systematically excluded from the open software and research software communities and who are interested in contributing to rOpenSci and the broader open source and research software communities.

rOpenSci News Digest, August 2022

Fri, 26 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Coworking sessions resume!

rOpenSci News Digest, July 2022

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci Code of Conduct update

We are pleased to announce the release of a new version of our Code of Conduct.
Based on the feedback of our community we added greater detail about acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in online settings and we have the first translation of the text to Spanish.

rOpenSci News Digest, June 2022

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Introducing rOpenSci new Community Manager, Yanina Bellini Saibene

We’re excited and extremely thrilled to announce Yanina Bellini Saibene is our new community manager! Yanina is a computer and data scientist by training and an educator by choice. She lives in Argentina, where she has been a researcher for the last 24 years. She is also a professor at Universidad Nacional Guillermo Brown. She is part of several communities as a member of The Carpentries Executive Council, R-Ladies Global and Leadership Team, R Forwards Core Team, R Consortium Infrastructure Steering Committee, useR! Working Group, Minorities in R (MiR), and Sociedad Argentina de Informática.

rOpenSci News Digest, May 2022

Fri, 20 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

R-universe prominently displays more information on packages!

We have extended the r-universe.dev platform to provide even more real-time information and metadata about R packages to help users quickly find and compare relevant software for a given topic, maintainer or organization.

rOpenSci News Digest, April 2022

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

pkgcheck reports now include dependencies

Our automated checking system for packages submitted for peer review now has a new section, “Package Dependencies”. This is intended to help editors and reviewers understand how package dependencies (that is, packages listed in Imports, Depends, or Suggests DESCRIPTION fields) are actually used by a package. The section summarises total numbers of function calls made to each package, followed by collapsible “details” sections containing numbers of calls made to the individual functions of each packages. Dependencies include base R and all recommended packages, ensuring that this section provides a comprehensive overview of how each package submitted for peer review uses and depends upon the entire R ecosystem.

rOpenSci News Digest, March 2022

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

R-universe gets advanced search!

The landing page for rOpenSci’s R-universe platform has gotten a makeover to facilitate easy searching through thousands of available R packages and articles. Discover new content by searching for keywords in package descriptions, authors, topics, vignettes, etc.

rOpenSci News Digest, February 2022

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci is hiring its next Community Manager!

Come be part of making our great community even better;
Help start a new program promoting diverse leadership in open source;

rOpenSci News Digest, January 2022

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Co-working events

Join us for social coworking & office hours monthly on 1st Tuesdays! Hosted by Steffi LaZerte and Nick Tierney. Everyone welcome. No RSVP needed. Consult our Events page to find your local time and how to join.

rOpenSci News Digest, November 2021

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Community call: @ropensci-review-bot help!

Tuesday, 07 December 2021 17:00 UTC we’ll share how we are Enhancing Software Peer Review with GitHub Automation.

Speakers Arfon Smith, Karthik Ram, Maëlle Salmon and Noam Ross will discuss how rOpenSci has worked with The Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS) to extend their approach of chatops-driven publishing into a new GitHub chat-bot that manages our editorial process: assigning tasks, tagging issues, running tests on software submissions, and returning reports to reviewers and editors, all from the comfort of a GitHub issue comment. Chat-ops automation has been critical to JOSS’s success, and shows huge promise for automating even more tedious tasks like frequent software checks and compliance with best practices. We will show how our new review bot improves the author and editor experience, explain how other teams can use and customize the bot, and discuss how this approach can be extended to tackle other automation, code review, and reproducibility challenges.

rOpenSci News Digest, October 2021

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Community call about the statistical software review project

A fantastic community call is coming up on Tuesday, 26 October 2021 18:00 UTC: Expanding Software Peer Review: Statistical Package Standards at rOpenSci!

rOpenSci News Digest, September 2021

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

A first package was submitted to rOpenSci Statistical Software Peer Review, two months after its opening: the tsbox package by Christoph Sax. We are very excited, and thankful for the opportunity to hone our new software review tooling!

rOpenSci News Digest, August 2021

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Recordings of useR! 2021

Recordings of useR! 2021 are now available on the conference website.

You can watch contributions by rOpenSci staff:

Jeroen Ooms’ keynote talk about the R-universe project (slidedeck);

rOpenSci News Digest, July 2021

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Great news for fans of statistics and software! rOpenSci’s peer-review system has now expanded to include review of packages implementing statistical routines and algorithms. We are thrilled to start this new chapter, for which we’ve developed a series of new standards and tools, and recruited a new board of experts to oversee. Authors of statistical software should begin by reading the Stats Software Dev Guide, which describes the categories of statistical software we now accept (Regression, Machine Learning, Exploratory Data Analysis, and more!), along with the procedures for preparing statistical software for peer review. It also introduces our automation tools, such as the pkgcheck package, which confirms that statistical software is ready to be submitted for review. Authors submitting statistical software to review should start by opening a pre-submission inquiry on our main software review repository. Inquiries are welcome well before packages are ready for submittal. We hope authors make use of our standards and tools throughout the development process so as to make review straightforward. To volunteer as a reviewer, fill our short form. For any question, you can post on the rOpenSci forum or contact the statistical software team (Mark Padgham, mark<at>ropensci.org, and Noam Ross, ross<at>ecohealthalliance.org).

rOpenSci News Digest, June 2021

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

R-universe

Video and resources from our past community call about rOpenSci’s R-universe Project were posted. The R-universe platform is a new umbrella project under which rOpenSci experiments with new ideas for improving publication and discovery of research software packages in R. In this 1-hour community call, Jeroen Ooms explained the basic steps of setting up your own universe, and getting started with publishing packages (including experimental software, development versions, research compendia) and articles on your personal subdomain.

rOpenSci News Digest, May 2021

Fri, 21 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup!

You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

We have no less than three categories of (online 😉) events coming up: social co-working events, a community call, a conference with contributions from four rOpenSci staff members. ✨

rOpenSci News Digest, April 2021

Fri, 16 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Are you interested in volunteering as a package reviewer for rOpenSci? We have just updated our volunteering form to make it easier to match volunteers and packages. It only takes a few minutes to fill the form. Thanks to the more than 150 people who already answered, we’re very thankful for your participation!

Latest rOpenSci News Digest

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! Some housekeeping first: We’ve been changing the infrastructure of our newsletter a bit so please update your RSS and JSON feeds to https://ropensci.org/tags/newsletter/index.xml and https://ropensci.org/tags/newsletter/index.json, respectively. You can read this post on our blog. Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!

rOpenSci HQ

Our R-universe project now has its own page on our website! 🚀 The R-universe platform is a new umbrella project under which we experiment with various new ideas for improving publication and discovery of research software in R.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, December 2020

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

We’re thrilled to announce three new rOpenSci Software Review Editors: Laura DeCicco, Julia Gustavsen, and Mauro Lepore and we released the fifth version (v0.5) of the rOpenSci Developer Guide.

Our Community Call on The Wild World of Data Repositories took place Dec 16 with an audience of 153 people! The video will be posted, along with collaborative notes and resources, by Dec 21.

Software Peer Review

2 community-contributed packages passed software peer review.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, October 2020

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci at R-Ladies

Our community manager Stefanie Butland, and one of our software review editors Brooke Anderson, are speaking remotely at an R-Ladies East Lansing meetup Thursday, October 22nd. They will talk about our how to get involved in rOpenSci using our new Contributing Guide as an entry point, and through participating in software review as a package author or reviewer.

Contributing Guide Release

The purpose of our new Contributing Guide is to welcome you to rOpenSci and help you recognize yourself as a potential contributor. It will help you figure out what you might gain by giving your time, expertise, and experience; match your needs with things that will help rOpenSci’s mission; and connect you with resources to help you along the way.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, August 2020

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

Join our Community Manager Stefanie Butland in a CarpentryCon @ Home fireside chat on Growing Inclusive, Computational Communities and Leaders. Live 90-min discussions Wed Aug 26 21h00 (2pm PDT) and Thu Aug 27 15h00 UTC (8am PDT). Other panelists over the two sessions are Abigail Cabunoc Mayes (Mozilla Foundation), Kate Hertweck (Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center), Toby Hodges (The Carpentries), Angela Li (U Chicago), Marlene Mhangami (Python Software Foundation), Naomi Penfold (eLife), and Serah Rono (The Carpentries). Submit your questions for the panel before Aug 24.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, June 2020

Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

The rOpenSci team, together with ten expert community members, put together a post: When Field or Lab Work is not an Option - Leveraging Open Data Resources for Remote Research. We highlighted examples of how specific collections of packages are being used right now in fields as varied as archaeology and climate science and compiled a table of > 100 rOpenSci packages for access to open data.

Software Peer Review

Software peer review is accepting submissions again, after a pause to reduce the load on reviewers and editors in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, April 2020

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

The recording, collaborative notes and links to community discussion and resources are up for our latest Community Call on Maintaining an R package. Panel moderated by Julia Silge included Elin Waring, Erin Grand, Leonardo Collado-Torres, and Scott Chamberlain.

Software Peer Review

1 staff-contributed package passed software peer review.

parzer - Parse messy geographic coordinates. Author: Scott Chamberlain; Reviewers: Julien Brun, María Victoria Munafó; Read the Review

On March 16, we paused new submissions for software peer review for 30 days (possibly longer) in the interest of reducing load on reviewers and editors in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, February 2020

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

On behalf of rOpenSci, thank you to everyone who has contributed their creativity, curiosity, smarts, and time in the last year. Read our Thank You, 2019.

Software Peer Review

3 community-contributed packages passed software peer review.

osfr - R Interface to OSF. Author: Aaron Wolen; Reviewers: Heidi Seibold, Carl Boettiger; Read the Review

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, December 2019

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci Announces a New $896k Award From The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to Improve the Scientific Package Ecosystem for R.
We’re excited to announce a new member of our team! Introducing Mark Padgham, rOpenSci’s new Software Research Scientist
NumFOCUS recognizes Melina Vidoni and Will Landau for their contributions to rOpenSci.
Videos, speaker’s slides, resources and collaborative notes from our Community Call on Testing in R are posted.
What would you like to hear about in an rOpenSci Community Call? We are soliciting your emoji-votes and new ideas for Community Call topics and speakers.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, October 2019

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

What would you like to hear about in an rOpenSci Community Call? We are soliciting your “votes” and new ideas for Community Call topics and speakers. Find out how you can influence us by checking out our new Community Calls repository.
Videos, speaker’s slides, resources and collaborative notes from our Community Call on Reproducible Workflows at Scale with drake are posted.
Help wanted! We encourage rOpenSci package authors to help us help you get more contributors to your package. If you label an issue “help wanted” (no hyphen or emojis), those issues can be found in a search of the rOpenSci organization.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, August 2019

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ

rOpenSci received a $678K award from the Sloan Foundation to expand Software Peer Review.
We are hiring for a new position in statistical software testing and peer review.
Join our next Community Call on Reproducible Workflows at Scale with drake September 24th.
Videos, speakers’ slides, resources and collaborative notes from our Community Calls on Involving Multilingual Communities and Reproducible Research with R are posted.

Software Peer Review

5 community-contributed packages passed software peer review.

2 Months in 2 Minutes - rOpenSci News, June 2019

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

rOpenSci HQ 👨🏽‍💻👩🏼‍💻 🏗️

Join our next Community Call on Involving Multilingual Communities June 28th.
Video of our Community Call on Security for R is up, with a long list of resources.
Our Community Manager, Stefanie Butland, spoke at R-Ladies Seattle and Fred Hutch about rOpenSci, Learning R, and Building Community May 22nd.

Software Peer Review ✔

6 community-contributed packages passed software peer review

nbaR - R Package Client for the Netherlands Biodiversity API
- Author: Hannes Hettling
- Issue: ropensci/onboarding#257
- Reviewers:
  - Dom Bennett
  - Max Joseph
git2rdata - Store and Retrieve Data.frames in a Git Repository
- Author: Thierry Onkelinx
- Issue: ropensci/onboarding#263
- Reviewers:
  - Jenny Bryan
  - Brodie Gaslam
citesdb - A high-performance database of shipment-level CITES trade data
- Author: Noam Ross
- Issue: ropensci/onboarding#292
- Reviewers:
  - pachamaltese
  - Xavier Rotllan-Puig
MtreeRing - A Shiny Application for Automatic Measurements of Tree-Ring Widths on Digital Images
- Author: Jingning Shi
- Issue: ropensci/onboarding#287
- Reviewers:
  - Brandon Hurr
  - Rory Nolan
rromeo - An R Client for SHERPA/RoMEO API
- Author: Matthias Grenié
- Issue: ropensci/onboarding#285
- Reviewers:
  - Philipp Ottolinger
  - Bruna Wundervald
tidync - A Tidy Approach to ‘NetCDF’ Data Exploration and Extraction
- Author: Michael Sumner
- Issue: ropensci/onboarding#174
- Reviewers:
  - Tim Lucas
  - Jakub Nowosad

Consider submitting your package or volunteering to review.