[R] R package submission

[peter dalgaard]

On Jan 22, 2012, at 18:15 , Artur wrote:

> Hello there
> 
> I will submit my first R package soon and I m curious If I can submit a
> package with an algorithm which is not published in a journal yet.  I see
> most people are writing papers on their packages. So I assumed they
> submitted their packages before the publication of their new methods (like
> Journal of Statistical Software).  Any ideas if it is possible ? 

As a matter of principle, you should request such information from the relevant journal(s), but, as far as I know, no statistical journal has a practice of jealously guarding first publication rights. Such practices do exist in, e.g., parts of the medical world.   

Usually, the policy is to disallow double publication of the actual paper content, but non-peer-reviewed items like conference abstracts and preprints are OK.

CRAN only requires that the package license allows free redistribution.  

You do need to be aware that your paper can sit in a journal pipeline for quite some time while the package code has already been released under an Open Source license. The good thing about this is that no-one can claim your contribution as theirs, but people might start building on your algorithms before the paper comes out. 

There is of course no guarantee that the editors and reviewers actually want to publish your paper, and publishing a package cannot coerce them to do so. There have been cases of packages including preprints of methods papers, even using LaTeX submission style files for easily recognized journals; I think that needs to be discouraged.

-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com