Jan 30, 2017

Software

New packages

• A new package wicket (v0.2.0) is on CRAN. wicket is set of utilities to generate bounding boxes from WKT (Well-Known Text) objects and R data types, validate WKT objects and convert object types from the sp package into WKT representations. Check out the wicket vignette to get started. Repository on GitHub

Releases

• A new version (v0.2.0) of isdparser is on CRAN. See release notes for changes. This version introduces a new function isd_transform() to transform the smaller set of mandatory variables. A much more complete set of data transformations/scaling options coming soon. See the isdparser vignette to get started. Repository on GitHub.
• A new version (v0.8.4) of taxize is on CRAN. See release notes for changes. This version introduces two new data sources: WoRMS and NatureServe; and few bug fixes. See the taxize vignettes to get started. Repository on GitHub.
• A new version (v0.9.7) of rgbif is on CRAN. See release notes for changes. This version makes a fix to occ_download(), and some minor changes and bug fixes including now using https for all requests. See the rgbif vignettes to get started. Repository on GitHub.
• Two new versions (v1.7.0 and v1.7.1) of RSelenium have landed on CRAN since our last news. See release notes for changes. See the RSelenium vignettes to get started. Repository on GitHub.
• Two new versions (v1.0.0 and v1.0.1) of GSODR have landed on CRAN since our last news. See release notes for changes. See the GSODR vignettes to get started. Repository on GitHub.
• A new version (v0.3.0) of geojsonio is on CRAN. See release notes for changes. This version adds support to geojsonio_list, geojsonio_json, and geojsonio_write for the sf package’s three classes: sf, sfc, and sfg. In addition, the three same functions gain parameters for optionally converting projection to WGS84 from the current projection. Other fixes and minor changes. See the geojsonio vignettes to get started. Repository on GitHub.

Onboarding

We accept community contributed packages via our onboarding system - a software review system, sorta like scholarly paper review, but way better. We’ll highlight new packages here that have come through this system. A huge thanks to our reviewers, who do a lot of work reviewing (see the blog post on our review system), and the authors of the packages!

If you want to be a reviewer we have a new form you can fill out, and we’ll ping you when there’s a submission that fits in your area of expertise.

The following packages were recently submitted to our onboarding process and are undergoing review:

• wordVectors > tools for creating and analyzing vector-space models of texts
  • Author: Ben Schmidt
  • Issue: ropensci/onboarding#92
  • Reviewers: not assigned yet
• biomartr > meta-genomic data retrieval and functional annotation retrieval
  • Author: Hajk-Georg Drost
  • Issue: ropensci/onboarding#93
  • Reviewers: not assigned yet
• charlatan > fake data/dataset generator
  • Author: Scott Chamberlain
  • Issue: ropensci/onboarding#94
  • Reviewers: not assigned yet
• lingtypology > Linguistic Typology and Mapping
  • Author: George Moroz
  • Issue: ropensci/onboarding#95
  • Reviewers: not assigned yet

The following packages recently went through our onboarding process and have been approved:

• hddtools > Hydrological Data Discovery Tools
  • Author: Claudia Vitolo
  • Issue: ropensci/onboarding#73
  • Reviewers:
    • Michael Sumner
    • Erin LeDell
• GSODR > work with Global Surface Summary of the Day (GSOD) weather data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)
  • Author: Adam Sparks
  • Issue: ropensci/onboarding#79
  • Reviewers:
    • Jeff Hanson
    • Dillon Niederhut

Use cases

A thesis and a blog post use/cite rOpenSci packages:

• Lucas cites and uses taxize in his Ph.D. thesis The role of population structure and size in determining bat pathogen richness ¹
• In a blog post from 2015, Rebecca Cain uses rnoaa to explore weather data in Michigan: NCDC API: an R Interface with many NOAA Data Sources ²

rOpenSci community call

Our 14th community call is coming up in March. The topic is How to ask questions so they get answered! Possibly by yourself!, with special guests Jenny Bryan and JD Long. Check out community call #14 for details.

Keep up with rOpenSci news

There are a number of ways to keep up with what rOpenSci is doing:

• Mailing list: Sign up with an email address to get new blog posts sent to your inbox -> ropensci.org/#subscribe
• rOpenSci on Twitter: we’re @ropensci
• The rOpenSci blog at ropensci.org/blog - you can subscribe in any RSS aggregator, or manually via https://ropensci.org/feed.xml. We also announce new blog posts on our Twitter account.

Footnotes