Do you maintain an open-source project like an R package or a collection thereof, and wonder how to best use various communication channels to inform and engage with your community of users?We’ve consolidated this list of tips.Some of them are required in our opinion, others are simply nice to have.Required: Having good release notes Since you’re developing a product, the first act of communication is to write informative release notes.Release

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog.Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci!rOpenSci HQ Coworking Read all about coworking! Join us for social coworking & office hours monthly on first Tuesdays!Hosted by Steffi LaZerte and various community hosts.Everyone welcome.No RSVP needed.Consult our Events page to find your local time and how to join.

The goal of the rOpenSci Champions Program is 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. This program includes 1-on-1 mentoring for the Champions as they complete a project and perform outreach activities in their local communities.

We are excited to announce that R-Universe has been awarded a Google Season of Docs grant. R-Universe is rOpenSci’s platform for testing, building, distributing, and discovering R packages, led by Jeroen Ooms.

Dear rOpenSci friends, it’s time for our monthly news roundup! You can read this post on our blog.Now let’s dive into the activity at and around rOpenSci! rOpenSci HQ Leadership changes at rOpenSci After 13 years at the helm of rOpenSci, our founding executive director Karthik Ram is stepping down.Noam Ross, rOpenSci’s current lead for peer review, will be our new Executive Director.

Dear rOpenSci community, This is a bit of a bittersweet announcement… After nearly 13 years, it’s time for me to step down as the Executive Director of rOpenSci. In the summer of 2011 I co-founded rOpenSci alongside a group of dedicated colleagues. What began as a casual collaboration among open science enthusiasts quickly evolved into something far more meaningful.

I am pleased, excited, and humbled to announce that I am stepping into the role of Executive Director of rOpenSci starting April 1. First, let me give my gratitude to our outgoing Executive Director and friend Karthik Ram for his leadership and mentorship running rOpenSci the past decade. He’s been a steady hand and visionary that helped our community accomplish so much together in this time.

Our first cohort of the rOpenSci Champions Program has now completed the second phase of the program by developing their project and carrying out outreach activities. In this article, we share each Champion’s project, their achievements and their outreach activities. Champions’ Projects In their applications Champions choose to develop a new package or to participate in the review process as authors or reviewers.

rOpenSci’s second cohort of Champions has been onboarded!Their training first started with a session on code style, was followed by three sessions on the basics of R package development, and ended with a session on advanced R package development, which consisted of a potpourri of tips with discussion, followed by time for applying these principles to the participants’ packages.Here, I want to share one of the topics covered: Package testing, and

rOpenSci Software Peer Review’s guidance is gathered in an online book that keeps improving!This blog post summarises what’s new in our Dev Guide 0.9.0, with all changes listed in the changelog. Now available in Spanish!