An empirical exploration of the diversified R ecosystem

TL;DR

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the evolution, user base, and collaboration patterns within the R ecosystem, highlighting its interdisciplinary growth and community dynamics.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive empirical exploration of R's development, user diversity, and collaboration networks using bibliometric and meta data analysis.

Findings

R's development is influenced by computer science and diverse academic disciplines.

The user base of R spans fields like agriculture, biology, environment, and medicine.

Collaboration patterns among R developers impact community growth and knowledge sharing.

Abstract

Born in the late 20s, R is one of the most popular software for statistical computing and graphics. With the development of information technology and the advent of the big data era, great changes have taken place in the R ecosystem. Based on the meta information of the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) and the bibliometric data of literature citing R, we discovered that while R is initiated by statistics, its development is benefited greatly from computer science and the main user group in academics come from various disciplines such as agricultural science, biological science, environmental science and medical science. In addition, we displayed the collaboration patterns among R developers and analyze the possible effects of collaboration in the R community.