Announcing New Software Peer Review Editors: Emily Riederer, Adam Sparks, and Jeff Hollister

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

rOpenSci has been running a rigorous and collegial software peer review system since 2015. Editors manage the review process, performing initial package checks, identifying reviewers, and moderating the process until the package is accepted by reviewers and transferred to rOpenSci. To address the scope and volume of packages submitted for review, it’s critical that we have a team of editors with complementary expertise. Adam brings his broad experience with API packages and his experience from agricultural research in academia, an international non-government organisation and government. Emily is known for openly sharing her processes-oriented approach to development based in her experience in industry. Jeff works hard at expanding open source tooling and skills in environmental science, particularly in government.

Meet our new editors!

🔗 Emily Riederer

Emily is a Senior Analytics Manager at Capital One, with degrees in Mathematics and Mathematical Decision Sciences (Statistics and Operations Research) from UNC Chapel Hill (USA). Emily leads a team focused on data enablement by developing “inner-source” analytical tools (including many R packages!) and designing better data structures. She enjoys sharing her thoughts on R and data on her blog and has contributed to two books (R Markdown Cookbook, 97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know). In her spare time, she maintains two open source R packages (projmgr and convo) and a dbt package (dbtplyr). Emily reviewed the tradestatistics package for rOpenSci, has guest-edited the review of dataspice and is currently handling cffr for generating Citation File Format (‘cff’) metadata for R Packages.

Emily on GitHub, Twitter, Website

I had the great fortune of stumbling upon rOpenSci relatively early in my career as an R programmer, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that this organization has had one of the single largest impacts on my career. rOpenSci’s meticulous documentation helped me to embrace best practices in my development work. Perhaps even more impactful is how watching rOpenSci work shaped my perspective on community building, leadership, and teamwork. I have always admired the well-oiled machine that rOpenSci has created – sustaining massive value with limited individual overhead by clearly defining expectations, providing opinionated infrastructure, and cultivating a phenomenal community. I’m thrilled to be taking a formal role in an organization that has had such an impact on me.

🔗 Adam Sparks

Adam is a Senior Research Scientist in Bioeconomic Modelling for the State of Western Australia in Perth and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Centre for Crop Health at the University of Southern Queensland and holds a PhD in epidemiology and ecology of plant pathogens from Kansas State University (USA). He specializes in simulation modelling and geographic information systems (GIS) and has developed or co-authored several R packages to help gather weather and climate data, simulate plant diseases and study pathogen populations. Adam has been active in rOpenSci software peer review since 2016, having five packages pass review: bomrang; getCRUCLdata; GSODR; nasapower; and chirps as co-author. Adam has reviewed two rOpenSci packages stats19, rnassqs, bib2df, and guest edited the review of allodb.

Adam on GitHub, Twitter, Website, rOpenSci

I became aware of rOpenSci several years ago when I started working on writing my own R packages. I had used R extensively for my PhD research and had even published a series of teaching documents on using R in the classroom for botanical epidemiology, but I’d not written my own R packages. That’s where rOpenSci came in. I had the good fortune to attend the first rOpenSci OzUnconf in Brisbane in 2016. While I was there GSODR was accepted to CRAN and I met a great bunch of folks in the Australian R community. I then had GSODR reviewed and accepted by rOpenSci, that encouraged me and since then I’ve worked to make already open data more accessible through my packages and to assist with reproducibility. In the time that I’ve been involved with rOpenSci, the ideals and community helped inspire me to co-found Open Plant Pathology, which serves a similar in spirit but different purpose for the global plant pathology community. It’s an honour to be a part of the editorial board and given the chance to give back to the community that has given me so much.

🔗 Jeff Hollister

Jeff is an ecologist with expertise in the spatial component of ecology and environmental sciences. He received his PhD in Environmental Science from the University of Rhode Island and works as a Research Ecologist with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) Office of Research and Development at the Atlantic Coastal Environmental Sciences Division in Narragansett, RI. His work focuses on lakes and harmful algal blooms, but a big part of his job is building tools in R for this research as well as growing the community of R users within the USEPA. Jeff maintains four packages on CRAN including elevatr, lakemorpho, quickmapr, and dadjokeapi (arguably his most important contribution). He reviewed the camsRad, osmplotr, and NLMR packages for rOpenSci and most recently served as guest editor for the rsat package.

Jeff on GitHub, Twitter, Website, rOpenSci

Many years ago I first started hearing about “data science”, “reproducibility”, and “open science.” These terms were new to me, but seemed like they were going to be important in my fields of ecology and environmental science. Problem was, I struggled to to use these ideas and tools in my own work. Lucky for me, I soon stumbled across rOpenSci and quickly felt at home in this community and that rOpenSci was going to help incorporate all these ideas into my fields. In the years since, I have watched rOpenSci closely, participated in events, done package reviews, and generally been in awe of the progress, growth, and impact rOpenSci has had. Needless to say I was flattered to be asked to join the editorial board and am excited to have this chance to give back to the rOpenSci community.

🔗 Submit your package!

Are you considering submitting your package for review? These resources will help.

• About rOpenSci Software Peer Review;
• Browse the online book rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review;
• Read public software review threads on GitHub