On 23 Nov 2007, at 4:51 pm, hadley wickham wrote:
> There are two common types of review. When reviewing a paper, you are
> helping the author to make a better paper (and it's initiated by the
> author). When reviewing a book, you are providing advise on whether
> someone should make an expensive purchase (and it's initiated by an
> third party). Reviewing an R package seems somewhat in between. How
> would you deal with new version of an R package? It seems like there
> is the potential for reviews to become stale very quickly.
This is a strange argument. A good package will get a good review,
which may help it to become better. A review of a weak package can
point out how it can be fixed. Reviews will not become stale, just
because packages are frequently updated by their authors (like some
that could be mentioned). These are generally smaller changes. A
constructive review will not just be concerned with details, but more
with the overall aims of the package and how they are achieved (or
not achieved).
> Another model to look at would be that of an encyclopedia, something
> like the existing task views. To me, it would be of more benefit if
> JSS provided support, peer review, and regular review, for these.
Why should JSS, one of the few journals for statistical software,
review texts? Task views are a good idea, but are general. They
give only a brief and subjective overview (and can hardly be expected
to do more).
> Entries would be more of a survey, and could provide links to the
> literature, much like a chapter of MASS.
If you were not an enthusiastic author of many R packages I would
start to think that you are afraid of being reviewed, Hadley! What
have you against someone studying a package, a group of packages or
some other aspect of R in detail? Maybe I had better start reviewers
on your packages first...
Thanks to several people who have contacted me independently and
offered to review packages, I'll keep the list informed about how
that goes. Apologies for JSS's webpage being down to-day, Jan de
Leuw tells me it's something to do with Thanksgiving weekend.
Antony Unwin
Professor of Computer-Oriented Statistics and Data Analysis,
Mathematics Institute,
University of Augsburg,
Germany
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