Variety and Mainstays of the R Developer Community
Lijin Zhang, Xueyang Li, Zhiyong Johnny Zhang · The R Journal · 2023
The thriving developer community has a significant impact on the widespread use of R software. To better understand this community, we conducted a study analyzing all R packages available on CRAN. We identified the most popular topics of R packages by text mining the package descriptions. Additionally, using network centrality measures, we discovered the important packages in the package dependency network and influential developers in the global R community. Our analysis showed that among the 20 topics identified in the topic model, *Data Import, Export, and Wrangling*, as well as *Data Visualization, Result Presentation, and Interactive Web Applications*, were particularly popular among influential packages and developers. These findings provide valuable insights into the R community.