[R] [Off-topic] Re: RSS News Article

[John Logsdon]

On 14 Oct 1998, Douglas Bates wrote:

> >>>>> "John" == John Logsdon <j.logsdon at lancaster.ac.uk> writes:
> 
>   John> BTW can I suggest, after the recent RSS News article, that all
>   John> publications should reference the software used.  This should
>   John> help to promote R and to ensure that the valuable support from
>   John> all the institutions is retained since citations indexes would
>   John> show how much it was used. The correct reference for R was on
>   John> the list a little while ago.
> 
> Can you give us a bit more information about the RSS News article?  I
> may have missed some messages but I don't recall previous reference on
> this list to such an article.
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Actually I had obviously mis-filed something in the RSS News brain
department - apologies to my good friend Frank!  Having scoured the
recent RSS News I couldn't find it either!

I was actually alluding to a brief discussion on Allstat about software at
the end of September started by a comment by John Nelder about a
statistical scandal.  Examples were given of analyses which referees could
not repeat either because they didn't have the data or the software or
both as well as the mis-use of packages. 

It is always possible to mis-use a program but I think it should become
mandatory on all Journal editors for articles to reference the software
used (and packages developed for the software).  Unless commercially
confidential, the data and procedure/macros should be publicly available.
This way, the excellent GPL and similar packages such as R and Octave that
are produced by people who care about the product rather than the profit
will get cited and the kudos will filter back to their (generally)
academic institutions. The other way of course is to publish a book but
that requires (a) time and (b) a final version of the program.

A year or so ago I was singed (a sort of lower case flame experience)  on
this list for suggesting that a financial mechanism could be set up to
channel funds to people like the core R team and the Octave developers.  I
use Linux not because it is nearly free but because it is reliable and by
far the best OS I have come across.  The same with R and Octave etc.  They
are actually (in their own way) as good as or better than the commercial
equivalents and the users are not paying for the road-shows, hotel bills,
marketing junkets etc that we all see at every conference.  Quality counts
in the end.

I don't know what the answer is but maybe citations is one way to keep the
products in focus.

Just a thought.  Apologies for being off-topic.

John


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