rOpenSci | Software Peer Review

Software Peer Review

rOpenSci’s suite of packages is comprised of contributions from staff engineers and the wider R community, bringing considerable diversity of skills, expertise and experience to bear on the suite. How do we ensure that every package is held to a high standard? That’s where our software review system comes into play: packages contributed by the community undergo a transparent, constructive, non adversarial and open review process. For that process relying mostly on volunteer work, associate editors manage the incoming flow and ensure progress of submissions; authors create, submit and improve their package; reviewers, two per submission, examine the software code and user experience. Our system current accepts software from a variety of broadly-defined categories, including our new system for peer review of statistical software.

Technically, we make the most of GitHub infrastructure: each package software peer review process is an issue in the ropensci/software-review GitHub repository. For instance, read the software peer review thread of the ropenaq package: the process is an ongoing conversation until acceptance of the package, with two external reviews as important milestones. Furthermore, we use GitHub features such as the use of issue templates (as submission templates), and labelling which we use to track progress of submissions (from editor checks to approval).

Resources

Our Editorial Team

Our editorial board members are volunteers.

Laura DeCicco
USGS
editor
Karthik Ram
Executive Director
co-founder • staff • editor
Anna Krystalli
University of Sheffield
editor
Julia Gustavsen
Agroscope
editor
Adam Sparks
Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development
editor
Noam Ross
Software Review Lead
strategic advisor • editor
Jeff Hollister
US Environmental Protection Agency
editor
Emily Riederer
Capital One
editor
Melina Vidoni
RMIT University
editor
Maëlle Salmon
Research Software Engineer
staff • developer • editor
Mauro Lepore
2 Degrees Investing Initiative
editor

Former editors

Lincoln Mullen
George Mason University
editor
Brooke Anderson
Colorado State University
editor
Scott Chamberlain
Technical Lead
staff • cofounder • editor • developer

Volunteer for rOpenSci

We welcome both code and non-code contributions. Read our Contributing Guide to learn how.

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