“Security” can be a daunting, scary, and (frankly) quite often a very boring topic. BUT!, we promise that this Community Call on May 7th will be informative, engaging, and enlightening (or, at least not boring)! Applying security best practices is essential not only for developers or sensitive data storage but also for the everyday R user installing R packages, contributing to open source, working with APIs or remote servers.

“The good news is, we’re not too dumb for democracy,” David Moscrop told a packed room of media, activists, book lovers, academics, and more.

Our next Community Call, on March 27th, aims to help people learn about using rOpenSci’s R packages to access and analyze taxonomy and biodiversity data, and to recognize the breadth and depth of their applications. We also aim to learn from the discussion how we might improve these tools.

Into comics and animation and UX? UX and education, open access, social justice or international development? Submit an idea for presentation at HCID Open Day 2019: Design for Good.

“What might be possible for us if we were to retain the social commitment that motivates our critical work, while stepping off the field of competition?” Kathleen Fitzpatrick asked a rapt audience at SFU’s Harbour Centre last Wednesday, “We would have to open ourselves to the possibility that our ideas might be wrong.” Fitzpatrick is Director of Digital Humanities at Michigan State University, the former Director of Scholarly Communication at

We are pleased to announce the release of our new Code of Conduct. rOpenSci’s community is our best asset and it’s important that we put strong mechanisms in place before we have to act on a report. As before, our Code applies equally to members of the rOpenSci team and to anyone from the community at large participating in in-person or online activities.

How can scholars communicate their work in more accessible, engaging ways? Where should they publish and promote their findings? What does “research communication” actually mean? On Tuesday, January 15, ScholCommLab researcher Michelle La will explore these questions and more in a short talk at SFU’s Graduate and Postdoctoral Student Photo Reception.

This November, the city of Niterói in Rio de Janeiro received the first edition of LATmetrics, an international conference dedicated to the advancement of altmetrics and open science research in Latin America. Bringing together researchers, science communicators, librarians, and other stakeholders, the event featured a diverse array of speakers on everything from social media metrics and open data to the impact of science in society.

🎤 Dan Sholler, rOpenSci Postdoctoral Fellow 🕘 Tuesday, December 18, 2018, 10-11AM PST; 7-8PM CET (find your timezone) ☎️ Details for joining the Community Call. Everyone is welcome. No RSVP needed. Researchers use open source software for the capabilities it provides, such as streamlined data access and analysis and interoperability with other pieces of the scientific computing ecosystem.

Although there are increasing incentives and pressures for researchers to share code (even for projects that are not essentially computational), practices vary widely and standards are mostly non-existent. The practice of reviewing code then falls to researchers and research groups before publication.