rOpenSci

Stefanie Butland

Karthik Ram

Noam Ross

Maëlle Salmon

We are thrilled to have been awarded new funding as part of the Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative [Open Science
program's](https://czi.co/OpenScience) education and capacity building
strategy. This \$400K grant will support a new project to enable more
members of historically excluded groups to participate in, benefit from,
and become leaders in the R, research software engineering, and open
source and open science communities.

Developers in the R and open source communities are overwhelmingly
white, male, from a handful of countries, primarily English-speaking,
and do not use assistive technologies to participate. Research software
should serve everyone in our communities. It needs to be sustainable and
open and **built by and for all groups**.

### Developing embedded community champions and peer mentorship groups

A community champion is defined by the Center for Scientific
Collaboration and Community Engagement ([CSCCE](http://www.cscce.org/))
as "an emergent leadership role within a community in which a community
member takes on more responsibility for the success, sustainability,
and/or running of the community"^[1](#fn:1){.footnote-ref
role="doc-noteref"}^. In collaboration with the CSCCE, we will design,
implement, and evaluate a program to increase the diversity of
contributors across all channels and levels of participation in rOpenSci
by supporting two cohorts of community champions from historically
excluded groups.

Each cohort will receive training on (1) how to plan and facilitate
engaging and inclusive workshops to support participants' success (by
CSCCE), (2) channels through which new members can engage in and
contribute to rOpenSci and R projects, and (3) technical skills in
software development and review. This series of 90-minute sessions will
be supplemented by ongoing peer connection in a private Slack channel so
that champions expand their own professional support networks while
gaining new skills. After training, champions will organize peer groups
in communities in which they are embedded. They will promote
participation in peer review and contribution to rOpenSci open source
software, infrastructure, and documentation and gather feedback on where
rOpenSci's current programming might be improved to meet the needs of
all who wish to participate. The tenure and responsibilities of each
cohort will have clear start and end dates and champions will receive an
honorarium.

We will develop *peer mentorship groups* to support participants from
historically excluded groups in their first technical contributions.
Peer-mentorship groups will be facilitated by rOpenSci technical and
community management staff, and also by community champions after Year
One. Facilitators will provide training for technical activities
(preparing a pull request, reviewing a package, preparing a package for
submission or publication on rOpenSci infrastructure). Training will be
followed by group "office hours", 1-on-1 support, and closed group chats
to support first-time participants in making their first open-source
contributions through rOpenSci.

### Expanding documentation beyond the English language

One of our most successful efforts is our [Software Peer Review
System](https://ropensci.org/software-review/)^[2](#fn:2){.footnote-ref
role="doc-noteref"}^. In 2021, we successfully [piloted Spanish-language
software peer
review](https://ropensci.org/blog/2021/07/27/censo2017-es/) in which the
submission itself, and all reviews and editorial responses were in
Spanish. While Spanish-language review is now available, our
documentation is still only available in English. We will translate our
[Dev Guide](https://devguide.ropensci.org/) "rOpenSci Packages:
Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review" and associated components of
the peer-review system (e.g., submission forms, bug report templates),
and produce guidance for authors on including non-English documentation
in their software packages. As part of Year Two activities, we will
explore the potential for expansion beyond Spanish to other languages,
soliciting community input on demand and conducting pilot reviews.

### Gratitude for those who do the hard work

We would like to thank organizations like [Minorities in
R](https://mircommunity.com/) for those who are often the "only ones in
the room", the [Latin American R
community](http://lacion.rbind.io/talk/2020_user2020_panel/),
[AfricaR](https://africa-r.org/#home), the nascent AsiaR community,
[R-Ladies](https://rladies.org/about-us/) for women and other gender
minorities, [Forwards](https://forwards.github.io/) and [projects that
encourage implementing accessibility
standards](https://user2021.r-project.org/blog/2021/11/04/accessibility_interview_liz_hare/)^[3](#fn:3){.footnote-ref
role="doc-noteref"}^. Their members do the hard work and show us the
way.

Look for an rOpenSci champions project launch announcement in 2022.

### References

::: {.footnotes role="doc-endnotes"}

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.  ::: {#fn:1}
    Woodley L. and Pratt K. (2021). Center for Scientific Collaboration
    and Community Engagement. (2021) The CSCCE Community Participation
    Model - Exploring the Champion mode.
    [10.5281/zenodo.5275270](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5275270) [↩︎](#fnref:1){.footnote-backref
    role="doc-backlink"}
    :::

2.  ::: {#fn:2}
    Ram K., Boettiger C., Chamberlain S., Ross N., Salmon M. and
    Butland S. (2019) "A Community of Practice Around Peer Review for
    Long-Term Research Software Sustainability," in Computing in Science
    & Engineering, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 59-65,
    [10.1109/MCSE.2018.2882753](https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2018.2882753). [↩︎](#fnref:2){.footnote-backref
    role="doc-backlink"}
    :::

3.  ::: {#fn:3}
    How To Improve Conference Accessibility For Screen-Reader Users ---
    An Interview With Liz Hare
    <https://user2021.r-project.org/blog/2021/11/04/accessibility_interview_liz_hare/>
    accessed Dec 13, 2021 [↩︎](#fnref:3){.footnote-backref
    role="doc-backlink"}
    :::
:::


We are thrilled to have been awarded new funding as part of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Open Science program’s education and capacity building strategy. This $400K grant will support a new project to enable more members of historically excluded groups to participate in, benefit from, and become leaders in the R, research software engineering, and open source and open science communities.

rOpenSci Announces $400k Award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to Empower Historically Excluded Groups as Community Leaders in Scientific Open Source Projects

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rOpenSci Announces $400k Award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to Empower Historically Excluded Groups as Community Leaders in Scientific Open Source Projects