useR! 2024

The research community is increasingly aware of the need to apply software engineering best practices to scientific software. This however doesn't mean that we should discard the huge ecosystem of existing tools with large, well-established, user bases. Instead, efforts should be dedicated to integrate best practices in existing tools where possible. But this can only be done if we have a clear idea of the current state of the ecosystem, with its gaps and needs.
In this presentation, I will describe the analysis we have conducted on the ecosystem of R packages for Epidemiology, as represented by the CRAN Task View in Epidemiology. It allows us to draw a picture of where efforts to support this ecosystem should focus. This also informs future training needs for this research community, and maps a path for external contributions to packages that wish it.
Importantly, this analysis is made reproducible and applicable to any CRAN Task View out of the box, which allows research and software communities from other fields to conduct the same assessment on their own domain.