[R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...

[Peter Dalgaard]

Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 20/06/2010 6:36 PM, Muenchen, Robert A (Bob) wrote:
>>   
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
>>> On Behalf Of Ivan Calandra
>>> Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:47 PM
>>> To: r-help at r-project.org
>>> Subject: Re: [R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...
>>>
>>> Bob,
>>>
>>> I have no idea whether it is realistic, but if you look for the papers
>>> that used R or SAS (or anything), you might get better results by
>>> searching for the way R and SAS are cited.
>>>     
>> Hi Ivan, that was what I tried when more generic keywords failed. However, almost no one seems to use that citation. For example, in 2009, only 28 papers contain "R Foundation" and 61 contain Bioconductor, which uses R. One single paper contains both. I appreciate the idea though!
> 
> 
> If you use Web of Science, then the abbreviation for the author in the 
> standard citation for R is R DEV COR TEAM.   Doing a search for 
> citations to that author in 2009 or 2010 finds 249 papers.  Variations 
> on the spelling that I see include
> 
>    
> R DEV C3R TEAM
> R DEV CAR GROUP
> R DEV CAR TEAM
> R DEV CIR TEAM
> R DEV COD TEAM
> R DEV COR
> R DEV COR T
> R DEV COR TEA
> R DEV COR TEAM
> R DEV COR TEAM C
> R DEV COR TEAM CO
> R DEV COR TEAM FD
> R DEV COR TEAM OR
> R DEV COR TEAM R
> R DEV COR TEAM RD
> R DEV COR TEAM VI
> R DEV COR TEAMR
> R DEV COR TEMA
> R DEV COR TRAM
> R DEV CORE TEAM
> R DEV CORETEAM
> R DEV CORR TEAM
> R DEV CORT TEAM
> R DEV CPR TEAM
> R DEV CT
> R DEV TEAM
> R DEVCOR TEAM
> R DEVELOPMENTCORE
> 
> Not all of those might really be R.  For example, there's probably a 
> north Atlantic codfishing team named R DEV COD TEAM.  But most of them 
> are, and they lead to 289 cited papers in 2009/10.
> 
> Duncan Murdoch

That sound a bit low. Last I checked R DEV COR TEAM, for ALL publication
years, it came up with about 13000 references within 511 different
misspellings of the R manual reference (& a few more).  Papers currently
being registered  tend to reference the version of R that was used when
the research was done, and with review delays etc. that can be a few
years back.

Another matter is that software citation varies widely by field. Of the
above 13000 references, I think about 3000 were from ecology (or was it
environmental science?). In economics, or indeed in mathematical
statistics, the tradition is to cite methods, but not software. (And one
"sinner" is the R Journal, in which is would be absurd to have every
paper cite R...)

-- 
Peter Dalgaard
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com