rOpenSci | rOpenSci Statistical Software Testing and Peer Review · Community Call
March 2, 2021

rOpenSci Statistical Software Testing and Peer Review

This is the first in a series of Community Calls we’ll host throughout the year on our statistical software review project.

We at rOpenSci are in the process of expanding the scope of our software peer-review system to encompass explicitly statistical software. As part of this we have developed new tools to help prepare software for submission. One of these, the autotest package, implements and automates rigorous testing of all function inputs, while another, the srr package, enables documentation of, and reporting on, how and where code meets our sets of category-specific standards. Developers of packages to be submitted to this newly expanded system will be expected to apply both of these tools prior to submission.

This one-hour event will provide an introduction to the project and feature developers who have helped to test and refine the tools, and will feature a live walk-through of the processes of applying these tools to a package.

Index of video:

  • 0:00 Welcome and introductions, Stefanie Butland
  • 3:48 Anna Krystalli gives Editor’s perspective
  • 7:00 Noam Ross introduces the project
  • 12:24 Mark Padgham walks through running autotest and srr packages on a skeleton package example
  • 23:14 Anna Krystalli explains what’s about to happen
  • 24:08 John Sakaluk walks through using autotest on his package-in-development
  • 30:48 Anna Krystalli
  • 31:48 Alex Hayes walks through using the srr package preparing his package for review
  • 38:43 Q & A moderated by Anna

Speakers

Portrait of Noam Ross
Noam Ross

Noam Ross is Principal Scientist for Computational Research at EcoHealth Alliance and rOpenSci Software Review Lead. He co-leads the rOpenSci Statistical Software Testing and Peer Review project. Noam on GitHub, Twitter, Website

Portrait of Mark Padgham
Mark Padgham

Mark Padgham is a Software Research Scientist with rOpenSci. He co-leads the rOpenSci Statistical Software Testing and Peer Review project. Learn more about Mark in this interview. Mark on GitHub, Twitter, Website

Portrait of Anna Krystalli
Anna Krystalli

Anna Krystalli is a Research Software Engineer at University of Sheffield and Associate Editor for rOpenSci Software Peer Review. Anna talked about ReproHacks in our Community Call on Reproducible Research with R. She has a PhD in Marine Macroecology. Anna on GitHub, Twitter, Website

Portrait of Alex Hayes
Alex Hayes

Alex Hayes is a PhD student in the University of Wisconsin-Madison statistics program, studying community detection in networks. He also maintains the broom package. Alex on GitHub, Twitter, Website

Portrait of John Sakaluk
John Sakaluk

John Sakaluk is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Western University (London, ON, Canada). He is interested in sexuality, romantic relationships, and psychometric modeling, and is the lead developer of the dySEM package for R. John on GitHub, Twitter, Website