[R] prevalence of R in publications and institutions

[Martin Morgan]

On 08/17/2012 09:25 AM, Douglas Bates wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 6:46 AM, Travis Perry <travis.perry at furman.edu> wrote:
>> Dr. Bates,
>>            Our department is considering replacing existing statistical
>> software packages in our curriculum with R, at my request.  To better inform
>> this decision we are interested to know the prevalence of R in the published
>> literature and its use across academic and research institutions.  I have so
>> far been unable to find satisfactory information on the subject.   Any
>> information you could provide would be much appreciated.
>>
>> Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
>>
>> best,
>>
>> --
>> Travis Perry
>> Associate Professor of Biology
>> Department of Biology
>> Furman University
>> 3300 Poinsett Highway
>> Greenville, SC 29613
>>
>> Senior Research Associate
>> Rhodes University
>> Grahamstown, South Africa
>> Cell (864)-561-4240
>>
>
> Because R is an Open Source system which is freely distributed and may
> be freely redistributed there is no way of keeping track of the
> downloads and its use in academic and research institutions.
>
> Searching for "R statistics" at a book site such as amazon.com or
> barnesandnoble.com should produce enough hits to convince your
> colleagues of an active development community.
>
> On scholar.google.com the system itself has been cited 3782 times and
> the initial paper on the system by Ihaka and Gentleman has been cited
> over 6000 times.
>
> Others on the R-help list may be able to give more information
> regarding the use of R in the biological sciences.

The Bioconductor annual report includes attempts to quantify scholarly 
citations

   http://bioconductor.org/about/annual-reports/

The July 2012 report section 1.4 indicates 4115 Google Scholar citations 
of Gentleman et al., 2004, which introduced the project. There were at 
least 321 PubMed citations with the term 'Bioconductor' in 2011. A fun 
game is to open your favourite high-profile science journal and play 
spot-the-R-or-Bioconductor figure or analysis; this is not a challenging 
game.

Martin

>
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