rOpenSci | Blog

All posts (Page 65 of 120)

Announcing new software peer review editors: Melina Vidoni and Brooke Anderson

We are pleased to welcome Brooke Anderson and Melina Vidoni to our team of Associate Editors for rOpenSci Software Peer Review. They join Scott Chamberlain, Anna Krystalli, Lincoln Mullen, Karthik Ram, Noam Ross and Maëlle Salmon. With the addition of Brooke and Melina, our editorial board now includes four women and four men, located in North America, South America and Europe.

Our open Software Peer Review system for community-contributed R tools is a key component of our mission to create technical infrastructure that lowers barriers to working with data sources on the web. 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. The number of packages submitted for review has increased every year, resulting in an increased workload for Editors and the need to expand the team.

...

Interacting with The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program data

There seem to be a lot of ways to write about your R package, and rather than have to decide on what to focus on I thought I’d write a little bit about everything. To begin with I thought it best to describe what problem rdhs tries to solve, why it was developed and how I came to be involved in this project. I then give a brief overview of what the package can do, before continuing to describe how writing my first proper package and the rOpenSci review process was. Lastly I wanted to share a couple of things that I learnt along the way. These are not very clever or difficult things, but rather things that were difficult to Google, which now I think about it should probably be the best metric for a difficult problem....

wateRinfo - Downloading tidal data to understand the behaviour of a migrating eel

Do you know what that sound is, Highness? Those are the Shrieking Eels — if you don’t believe me, just wait. They always grow louder when they’re about to feed on human flesh. If you swim back now, I promise, no harm will come to you. I doubt you will get such an offer from the Eels.

Vizzini, The Princess Bride

European eels (Anguilla anguilla) have it tough. Not only are they depicted as monsters in movies, they are critically endangered in real life. One of the many aspects that is contributing to their decline is the reduced connectivity between their freshwater and marine habitats. Eels are catadromous: they live in freshwater, but migrate to the Sargasso Sea to spawn, a route that is blocked by numerous human structures (shipping locks, sluices, pumping stations, etc.). Pieterjan Verhelst studies the impact of these structures on the behaviour of eels, making use of the fish acoustic receiver network that was established as part of the Belgian LifeWatch observatory. This animated video gives a quick introduction to his research and the receiver network:

...

rOpenSci’s new Code of Conduct

We are pleased to announce the release of our new Code of Conduct. rOpenSci’s community is our best asset and it’s important that we put strong mechanisms in place before we have to act on a report.

As before, our Code applies equally to members of the rOpenSci team and to anyone from the community at large participating in in-person or online activities.

What’s new?

  • A Code of Conduct Committee: Stefanie Butland (rOpenSci Community Manager), Scott Chamberlain (rOpenSci Co-founder and Technical Lead) and Kara Woo (independent community member). We are responsible for receiving, investigating, deciding, enforcing and reporting on all reports of potential violations of our Code.
  • Greater detail about acceptable and unacceptable behaviors
  • Clear instructions on how to make a report
  • Information on how reports will be handled
  • A commitment to transparency with our community while upholding the privacy of victims

Our new Code of Conduct has been influenced by and adapted from many sources including the Open Source and Feelings talk by Audrey Eschright, the R Consortium Community Diversity and Inclusion Working Group’s draft Code of Conduct, the Geek Feminism anti-harassment policy, our own Community Call, How do I create a Code of Conduct for my event/lab/codebase?, incident reporting forms from NumFOCUS & Jupyter, and perhaps most importantly, by community members from whom we learn so much.

...

vitae: Dynamic CVs with R Markdown

🔗

Why vitae?

vitae logoZgotmplZ

ZgotmplZ

ZgotmplZ

     style="  object-fit: cover; object-position: center;  height: 250px;  width: 250px; margin-right: 15px"
/> 
            <p>
              <p>The process of maintaining a CV can be tedious. It&rsquo;s a task I often forget about - that is until someone requests it and I find that my latest is woefully out of date. To make matters worse, these professional updates often need repeating across variety of sites (such as ORCID and LinkedIn).</p>
...

Working together to push science forward

Happy rOpenSci users can be found at