Open science, reproducibility and transparency in research are the pathways to improve the sustainability of scientific research. Open science is vital for the progress of science as it allows scientific information, data, and methodologies to be more widely accessible and reusable. Research reproducibility and transparency are crucial for scientific advancement, not just because they ensure that the results are correct, but also because they open doors for new collaborations and avoid duplication of efforts. R is a leading open-source language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.
A team led by Dr Thiyanga S. Talagala, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Statistics, developed 10 open-source software R packages to make their research and data accessible to everyone. “Turning your algorithms, codes, and data into packages that others can easily download and use helps to make scientific research flow faster, easier, and more productive.” said Dr Talagala.
The R software packages they developed enable programmatic access to a wide range of scientific data repositories, including data from weekly epidemiological reports, a daily summary of COVID-19 cases, deaths, and recovered cases, and data manipulation and analysis.
Check out their R software packages on CRAN and GitHub.
R packages on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN)
nic: Color palettes inspired by nature for data visualization
covid19srilanka: R package that holds Covid-19 data related to Sri Lanka taken from Covid-19 situation reports published by the Epidemiology unit, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka
DSjobtracker: R package that holds a dataset containing information related to data science job advertisements. In particular, what skills and qualifications are required for data science-related jobs?
MedLEA: The MedLEA package provides morphological and structural features of 471 medicinal plant leaves and 1099 leaf images of 31 species and 29-45 images per species.
mozzie: R package that holds data relating to dengue cases in Sri Lanka
R Packages on GitHub
tsdataleaks: R package for detecting data leaks in time series forecasting competitions
tea: R package that holds data corresponding to tea exporting countries
colmozzie: R package for dengue cases and climate variables in Colombo Sri Lanka
DISC: Data set containing information about weekly notified diseases reported by the Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine in Sri Lanka
ceylon: R package to plot maps of Sri Lanka
