[R-pkg-devel] DOI for archived package?

[Kevin R. Coombes]

Hi,

I am in the process of submitting a "workflow" article about an R 
package (which is onCRAN) to F1000Research. The associate editor that I 
am dealing with wants a "DOI" for the source code of the package being 
described in the manuscript.  I have already explained that CRAN 
archives all versions of packages, and I sent him the URL to the archive 
page for the package, However, he still seems to believe that a DOI 
needs to be assigned by some site like Zenodo.

I haven't yet responded by pointing out that CRAN has been archiving all 
versions of packages since at least the year 2000, it has mirrors all 
over the world, and the URL/URI used here is likely to be far more 
permanent than the DOI from Zenodo. Nor have I pointed out that there 
are more than 15,000 packages at CRAN, nor that not a single R user 
would ever think to go look on Zenodo for an R package.

Does anyone have other suggestions for how to respond? (I know;  I could 
just put the [expletive] thing into Zenodo and move on, but creating a 
permanent identifier for something that will *never *be accessed just 
seems stupid.)

Thanks,
   Kevin

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