Contributing to the R Validation Hub
Mailing List
For occasional news updates, you can join our mailing list. This will enable you and your colleagues to receive notifications of key updates/software releases, blog posts and invites to all-hands Hub meetings.
Active Participation
If you are willing and able to commit more time to the R Validation Hub’s mission, then there are several options depending on your skills and interests. If you do not feel you have the necessary technical skills to contribute then please don’t let that stop you getting in touch and sharing ideas to support the implementation of a risk-based R package assessment.
In each case you can get involed either by contacting the stream leads via the relevant GitHub page, or by sending a message to us via the contact form on our Contact Us page.
The {riskmetric} R Package
The {riskmetric} package collects metrics that support the idea of a risk-based evaluation of R packages. The package collects and summarises various metrics and provides the means to quantify the risk of a package via a weighted risk score. It also serves as the backbone to the Risk Assessment shiny application. For more information see the package site or GitHub page.
Current Focus
The {riskmetric} team are currently looking to build features to support the idea of package cohorts. We are also looking to refine some of the meta-information collected by riskmetric to better-serve the risk assessment application. The team also have a backlog of other open issues, including additional metrics that they would like to explore.
Key Skills Required
A fundamental understanding of R packages is essential for anyone looking to support the {riskmetric} team. Package development experience is also highly beneficial.
The Risk Assessment Application
The risk assessment shiny app is an extension of the {riskmetric} R package and provides a graphical interface to the {riskmetric} functionality. It provides further exploratory capabilities in addition to the numeric metrics and improves ease-of-use for non-technical users. For more information see the package GitHub page.
Current Focus
In addition to working with the {riskmetric} team to better-support cohorts of packages and multiple package versions, the team are building up metric and package exploration features. This includes links to source information such as vignettes, and the ability to explore package documentation and tests.
Key Skills Required
Shiny app development experience is highly desirable; specifically, experience with shiny modules and the {golem} package would be beneficial, but is not required.
Regulatory R Package Repository
This is a brand new (Q3 2022) initiative that is just getting off the ground. The aim is to create a cross-pharma regulatory package repository. For the latest, please check out the GitHub page.
Current Focus
The first milestone (projected to be December 2022) will be primarily focused around building an initial core team and more thoroughly scoping the project.
Key Skills Required
To get this project off the ground requires a variety of skills. The aim is to assemble a team with backgrounds spanning:
- R package development (specifically testing & builds)
- Infrastructure & administration (containers, CI/CD, repository hosting)
- Front end & API serving
How else can I help?
If you have tried to implement any of the R Validation Hub’s ideas, or used any of our tools, or even if you’ve decided to go own way, then we would love you to submit a case study describing what you have done to implement a GxP-compliant R environment to our Case Study catalogue on GitHub. Use our mailing list or GitHub issues to let us know of your intentions and we’ll work with you to upload your written case study. We’re also pleased to share case studies verbally with the wider community. You can find videos of previous presentations on our case studies page.
If you still don’t feel that you can contribute then please consider one of our partner initiatives.