Oct 13, 2015

Software

• A new version (0.1.4) of internetarchive is on CRAN. See NEWS for changes.
• A new version (0.6.6) of taxize is on CRAN. This version introduces a new function iucn_id() to get an IUCN ID from a taxon name. All uBIO functions are now defunct - that is, gone; no longer available in the package. A whole bunch of minor fixes and improvements. See the release notes for changes.
• A new version (0.1.4) of fulltext is on CRAN. This version adds a new function ft_get_si() to fetch supplementary files for articles (from Will Pearse). Another new function ft_links() helps you grab links for the full text versions of articles (where available). Also included are some bug fixes and minor improvements. See the release notes for changes.
• A new version (0.4.0) of spocc is on CRAN. This version includes a new function as.vertnet() to coerce various inputs to vertnet occurrence data objects. In addition, occ(), the major workhorse in spocc gains two new functions, page and start, to facilitate paging across data sources, regardless of the paging parameters/scheme they use. Also included are some bug fixes and minor improvements. See the release notes for changes.
• A new version (0.8.9) of rgbif is on CRAN. This version includes a number of minor changes and bug fixes, including a fix to the elevation() function to make sure checks are done on incoming data (thanks luisDVA). See the release notes for changes.
• A new version (0.3.4) of gistr is on CRAN. This version adds a new function gist_create_git() to use git via the rOpenSci client git2r instead of the GitHub HTTP API. The git interface allows you easily include any arifacts during knit(), and to push binary files (e.g., images). Also, improvments and bug fixes. See the release notes for changes.
• A new version (0.3.0) of rerddap is on CRAN. This version makes the suite of cache functions easier to use by acting not only on cached file names, but the outputs of the main data acquisition functions so you can easily delete cached files as needed. See the release notes for changes.

Community

• We had our 7th community call on October 7th with Tony Fischetti talking about assertr. Notes from the call and the video are now up.
• Out 8th community call is tenatively planned for Wednesday December 2nd, but no speaker planned yet.

Use cases

A recent paper cites rOpenSci software:

• Gomez et al. have a paper titled COMADRE: a global database of animal demography in which they cite taxize ¹

In our discussion forum we maintain a list of uses of our software found in GitHub repos (combination of occassional manual search and via http://scisoft-net-map.isri.cmu.edu): https://discuss.ropensci.org/t/use-of-some-ropensci-packages-on-github/137. This is a good place to look if you’re interested in using, or already use, one of our packages, and want to know how others use it. Here’s a smattering of cool examples:

• rt - R tools for the command line (uses git2r)
• ratlantis - R code for interfacing with Atlantis ecosystem modeling software (uses rglobi, rfishbase, rgbif, spocc, and taxize)
• gissr - R functions which make working with spatial data easier (uses geojsonio)
• ParticipationInComputing - Explore rate and composition of individuals actively participating in the online statistical computing community. (uses rcrossref)