Thank You to the rOpenSci Community, 2021

Can you think of an rOpenSci community member that you’d like to thank?

• A reviewer who helped you improve your package?
• Someone who answered your question?
• A community call speaker from whom you gained insight?
• Someone who encouraged you behind the scenes?

Consider leaving them a note in the comments below expressing your gratitude. We often think our thank yous, but expressing thank yous can be incredibly meaningful. Try to be specific. What did they do? What impact did their actions have?

On that note, we also want to take a moment to say thank you, to YOU. Thank you so much for making the rOpenSci community that much more awesome.

Although it’s been another hard year across the globe, this community has continued to come together to build good things. We’ve had 20 packages successfully complete software peer review¹ with the help of about 40 reviewers and 11 editors, including 3 new editors. Many people contributed code or documentation. Similar to last year, 85 people made their first code contribution to rOpenSci this year! Others shared 88 new use cases to help package authors see how their work is being used and help other users imagine how they can apply it.

Our community has benefited from the voices of many different people this year. Our blog had 34 community member authors, including 13 first-time authors, Community Calls were attended by over 200 people in 27 countries on 5 continents, and virtual social coworking and office hours brought together people from at least 12 countries to get their own work done and to join in some spirited scavenger hunts! Many others have continued to cite our software, ask or answer questions, open issues to report bugs or request features, make pull requests to fix things, weigh in on standards and best practices, invited us to talk about our work, or mentioned us in a presentation, a post, or on Twitter.

Some people’s volunteer contributions this year warrant a special mention (alphabetically sorted by first name):

• Editors for Software Peer Review: Adam Sparks, Anna Krystalli, Emily Riederer, Laura DeCicco, Jeff Hollister, Julia Gustavsen, Mauro Lepore, Melina Vidoni, plus rOpenSci team members who volunteer as Editors, Karthik Ram, Noam Ross, Maëlle Salmon and alumnus Brooke Anderson;
• Advisory Board and Editors for Statistical Software Peer Review: Ben Bolker, Leonardo Collado-Torres, Paula Moraga, Rebecca Killick, Stephanie Hicks, Toby Hocking, and alumni Martin Morgan, Max Kuhn;
• Contributors to fine tuning of our processes and tools for Statistical Software Peer Review: Christoph Sax, Jouni Helske;
• New maintainers of existing rOpenSci packages: Alban Sagouis, Bianca Kramer, Brenton Wiernik, Daniel Hocking, David Selby, Gavin Simpson, Hannah Owens, John Waller, Lluís Revilla Sancho, Luna Reyes, Michał Bojanowski, Najko Jahn, Naupaka Zimmerman, Ralf Herold, Roy Mendelssohn, Salix Dubois, Sharla Gelfand, Vijay Barve, the GBIF team;
• Participants in our pilot software peer review entirely in Spanish: Mauricio Vargas Sepúlveda (Pachá), Frans van Dunné, Maria Paula Caldas, Melina Vidoni, Mauro Lepore, and Yanina Bellini Saibene for encouraging us;
• Presenters in our Community Calls: Alex Hayes, Anna Krystalli, Arfon Smith, Christoph Sax, Hugo Gruson, John Sakaluk, Juliane Manitz, Rebecca Killick, and the many many people who commented in our shared docs;
• Contributors to our guides
  • rOpenSci Statistical Software Peer Review: Christoph Sax, Jakub Nowosad, Jem Stachelek, and stats peer review Editors;
  • rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review: Christophe Dervieux, Frans van Dunné, Hugo Gruson, Lluís Revilla Sancho, and peer review Editors;
  • rOpenSci Community Contributing Guide: Carlos Cámara, Jonas Hagenberg, Leon Lenostatos;
• External member of our Code of Conduct Committee, Kara Woo;
• rOpenSci Strategic Advisors, Carl Boettiger, Jenny Bryan, Rich FitzJohn.

We extend a special thank you to staff alumnus and rOpenSci co-founder Scott Chamberlain for his decade of contributions to rOpenSci and the R community.

Thank you all for making rOpenSci. Wishing you a 2022 in which we all feel like we belong.

1. all numbers reported in this post are from Dec 1, 2020 to Nov 30, 2021 ↩︎