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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.
What are the rOpenSci Champions up to now?
Our Champions and mentors have been carrying out various programmed activities.
The first stage of the program has a very important training component. This year, we divided the training into technical and community tracks, with several one to two-hour sessions each. Here, you can find the openly available material for each session.
The Technical Track is focused on good software and package development practices:
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Beautiful Code, Because We’re Worth It!: a 1-hour session on good practices for writing code.
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Package Development: The Mechanics: three 2-hour sessions for beginners to demystify the creation of an R package.
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Package Development: Not Rocket Science: a 2-hour hands-on workshop for advanced R package development with tips and tricks.
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How rOpenSci Performs Peer Review: a 2-hour workshop to showcase and discuss how rOpenSci communicates, builds, and reviews software.
The Community Track is focused on community-building skills:
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How To Contribute to Open Projects and Communities: a 2-hour session presenting community participation frameworks, examples, and recommendations for your package.
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Marketing Ideas For Your Package: A blog post presenting a series of activities and tools for advertising your package.
Next month, we will complete the training with a workshop on Git and GitHub and another on Event Organization.
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.
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Tuesday, June 4th, 09:00 Australia Western (01:00 UTC), R in the Wild with cohosts Ernest Guevarra, Tomás Zaba, Nicholus Tint Zaw, Zython Paul Lachica and Steffi LaZerte.
- Work on some of your own wild workflows
- Learn how others use R in the Wild (at work, with or without teams)
- Chat with our cohosts, discuss the challenges they face, and wins they have through their work
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Tuesday, July 2nd, 14:00 Europe Central (12:00 UTC), Git and GitHub with cohost Zhian Kamvar and Steffi LaZerte.
- Read up on Git and GitHub and how they might serve you
- Start your first Git/GitHub project
- Chat with our cohost about the pros and cons of Git & GitHub, resources for getting started and tips and tricks.
And remember, you can always cowork independently on work related to R, work on packages that tend to be neglected, or work on what ever you need to get done!
Software 
New packages
The following package recently became a part of our software suite:
- dendroNetwork, developed by Ronald Visser: Creating dendrochronological networks based on the similarity between tree-ring series or chronologies. The package includes various functions to compare tree-ring curves building upon the dplR package. The networks can be used to visualise and understand the relations between tree-ring curves. These networks are also very useful to estimate the provenance of wood as described in Visser (2021) DOI:10.5334/jcaa.79 or wood-use within a structure/context/site as described in Visser and Vorst (2022) DOI:10.1163/27723194-bja10014. It is available on CRAN. It has been reviewed by Kaija Gahm and Zachary Gajewski.
Discover more packages, read more about Software Peer Review.
New versions
The following nine packages have had an update since the last newsletter: comtradr (v1.0.0), dendroNetwork (0.5.4), drake (7.13.10), fellingdater (v1.0.2), melt (v1.11.4), nasapower (v4.2.1), osmextract (v0.5.1), stplanr (v1.2.0), and traits (v0.5.1).
Software Peer Review
There are thirteen recently closed and active submissions and 7 submissions on hold. Issues are at different stages:
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One at ‘6/approved’:
- dendroNetwork, Create networks of dendrochronological series using pairwise similarity. Submitted by RonaldVisser.
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Three at ‘5/awaiting-reviewer(s)-response’:
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karel, Learning programming with Karel the robot. Submitted by Marcos Prunello.
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rOPTRAM, Derive soil moisture using the OPTRAM algorithm. Submitted by Micha Silver.
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mregions2, Access Data from Marineregions.org: The Marine Regions Gazetteer and the Marine Regions Data Products. Submitted by salvafern.
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Two at ‘4/review(s)-in-awaiting-changes’:
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rix, Rix: Reproducible Environments with Nix. Submitted by Bruno Rodrigues.
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agromet, Índices y Estadísticos Climáticos e Hidrológicos. Submitted by Paola Corrales.
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Three at ‘3/reviewer(s)-assigned’:
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cancerprof, API Client for State Cancer Profiles. Submitted by Brian Park.
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osmapiR, OpenStreetMap API. Submitted by Joan Maspons.
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fwildclusterboot, Fast Wild Cluster Bootstrap Inference for Linear Models. Submitted by Alexander Fischer. (Stats).
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Three at ‘2/seeking-reviewer(s)’:
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chopin, CHOPIN: Computation for Climate and Health research On Parallelized INfrastructure. Submitted by Insang Song.
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rsi, Efficiently Retrieve and Process Satellite Imagery. Submitted by Michael Mahoney.
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sits, Satellite Image Time Series Analysis for Earth Observation Data Cubes. Submitted by Gilberto Camara.
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One at ‘1/editor-checks’:
- gigs, Assess Fetal, Newborn, and Child Growth with International Standards. Submitted by Simon Parker. (Stats).
Find out more about Software Peer Review and how to get involved.
On the blog
- Communication Tips for your Open-Source Project by Maëlle Salmon.
Calls for contributions
Calls for maintainers
If you’re interested in maintaining any of the R packages below, you might enjoy reading our blog post What Does It Mean to Maintain a Package?.
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historydata, datasets for historians. Issue for volunteering.
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USAboundaries (and USAboundariesdata), historical and contemporary boundaries of the United States of America . Issue for volunteering.
Calls for contributions
Also refer to our help wanted page – before opening a PR, we recommend asking in the issue whether help is still needed.
Package development corner
Some useful tips for R package developers. 
Token now needed for code coverage via codecov and {covr} on GitHub Actions
Test coverage reports are useful when assessing and improving tests of an R package.
One can run the covr package locally, or send results to an interface like codecov.io that provides interactive exploration of the output.
It is possible to compute test coverage and send the results to codecov.io on GitHub Actions, using the r-lib/actions actions.
Now, recently, workflows have started to fail if one did not set a codecov.io token as an environment variable.
How to solve this
- For an individual repo, add your codecov.io token as
CODECOV_TOKENto the repository secrets. - For an organization, ask the organization owner to create an organization wide codecov.io token and to store it as an organization secret. Make sure to update your GitHub Actions workflow file, for instance by running
usethis::use_github_action("test-coverage").
Notes on package repositories
Lluís Revilla Sancho wrote about Packaging R: getting in repositories.
We particularly note his two definitions of package repositories: the first one consists in making install.packages() work, the second in adding a layer of checks to packages in the repository.
He then added “R-universe is using the first definition but could be used to generate repositories with checks that comply with the second definition.”
Standardize a DESCRIPTION file in one function call
Do you know about the desc::desc_normalize() function that orders and formats DESCRIPTION fields in a standard way?
Once you start using it, there’s no way back.
You can also call it indirectly via usethis::use_tidy_description() that also sets the Encoding field to UTF-8.
Automated refactoring with xmlparsedata
Refactoring code can be tedious manual work, but it can also be tedious automated work. 
Read a post about how to replace all occurrences of a given function call with another one using an XML representation of the code.
What’s your favorite IDE?
Athanasia Monica Mowinckel wrote an informative post about the IDEs she uses.
Code review resources
Beside the tidyverse code review guidance, we can now recommend you check out the code review anxiety workbook by Carol Lee and Kristen Foster-Marks, that explains what code review anxiety is, and describes efficient methods to deal with it.
Last words
Thanks for reading! If you want to get involved with rOpenSci, check out our Contributing Guide that can help direct you to the right place, whether you want to make code contributions, non-code contributions, or contribute in other ways like sharing use cases.
You can also support our work through donations.
If you haven’t subscribed to our newsletter yet, you can do so via a form. Until it’s time for our next newsletter, you can keep in touch with us via our website and Mastodon account.
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Continue reading: rOpenSci News Digest, May 2024
Long-term Implications and Future Developments in rOpenSci
The continuous developments at rOpenSci strengthen its position as a key player in the open science community. The organization’s addition to the Research Organization Registry highlights its central role in linking and disambiguating metadata about research organizations in the scholarly record.
rOpenSci Champions Program
The rOpenSci Champions program emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and development. By incorporating technical and community tracks, the program ensures its Champions are well-rounded in both hard and soft skills, making them excellent collaborators in open science projects. It sets the stage for similar initiatives focused on offering comprehensive training in open science skills. Future program iterations might include even more specialized tracks or collaborative partnerships with other open science organizations.
Software Development and Peer Review
The creation and review of new software packages represent a continuous cycle at rOpenSci. The organization is always eager to welcome new package submissions and contributes to the development robust, peer-reviewed software for the open science community. The renewal of packages such as dendroNetwork and comtradr demonstrates the continuous improvement that is integral to software development at rOpenSci. Keeping up with updates and modifications pushes developers to strive for excellence and to stay ahead of the curve in their research fields.
Coworking and Community Building
The embrace of coworking sessions manifests rOpenSci’s commitment to fostering community and collaboration. These sessions allow individuals to come together, learn from each other, and tackle challenges as a collective. This initiative may trigger similar community events fostering collaboration in the open science space.
Actionable Advice Based on Insights
For R Developers:
- Consistently update the packages you develop. Consider submitting your packages to rOpenSci for peer review. It can result in wider uptake of your package by providing an assurance of quality to potential users.
- Take advantage of trainings and workshops hosted by rOpenSci. Repetitive learning and exposure to new ideas and practices can help improve your development skills.
For Open Science Enthusiasts:
- Participate in coworking sessions. It’s not just about coding; it’s an opportunity to network, discuss challenges, and learn from experts.
- Consider becoming an rOpenSci Champion. You will get access to mentoring and training sessions that can boost your profile as an open science practitioner.
For Organizations:
- Follow rOpenSci’s model of creating flexible training programs for your contributors. Catering to different learning styles and areas of interest can increase participant engagement and skill set.
- Encourage team members to participate in rOpenSci’s coworking sessions. This can enhance their skills while allowing them to network with other developers and enthusiasts.