rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review

Guide for package authors, maintainers, reviewers and editors in rOpenSci software peer-review system. This book is a guide for authors, maintainers, reviewers and editors of rOpenSci. The first section of the book contains our guidelines for creating and testing R packages. The second section is dedicated to rOpenSci’s software peer review process: what it is, our policies, and specific guides for authors, editors and reviewers throughout the process. The third and last section features our best practice for nurturing your package once it has been onboarded: how to collaborate with other developers, how to document releases, how to promote your package and how to leverage GitHub as a development platform. The third section also features a chapter for anyone wishing to start contributing to rOpenSci packages.

rOpenSci Dev Guide

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. Refer to its Zenodo DOI to cite it.

@software{ropensci_2026_18885936,
  author       = {rOpenSci and
                  Anderson, Brooke and
                  Bellini Saibene, Yanina and
                  Butland, Stefanie and
                  Chamberlain, Scott and
                  DeCicco, Laura and
                  Gustavsen, Julia and
                  Krystalli, Anna and
                  LaZerte, Steffi and
                  Lepore, Mauro and
                  Mullen, Lincoln and
                  Padgham, Mark and
                  Ram, Karthik and
                  Ross, Noam and
                  Salmon, Maëlle and
                  Vidoni, Melina and
                  Riederer, Emily and
                  Sparks, Adam and
                  Hollister, Jeff and
                  Toby Hocking and
                  Emi Tanaka and
                  Jouni Helske and
                  Beatriz Milz and
                  Margaret Siple and
                  Nima Hejazi and
                  Andrew Heiss and
                  Lucy D'Agostino McGowan},
  title        = {rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and
                   Peer Review
                  },
  month        = mar,
  year         = 2026,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {v1.0.0},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.18885936},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18885936},
  swhid        = {swh:1:dir:da641d8a96ec67c408ca8049c32e81a8816d25d9
                   ;origin=https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2553043;vis
                   it=swh:1:snp:210372f64a2b66edd08eb533e185d06f61ca7
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                  },
}

You can also read the PDF version of this book.