17.8 Scientific publication

• Vignettes can also be useful if you want to explain the details of your package. For example, if you have implemented a complex statistical algorithm, you might want to describe all the details in a vignette so that users of your package can understand what’s going on under the hood, and be confident that you’ve implemented the algorithm correctly. In this case, you might also consider submitting your vignette to the Journal of Statistical Software or The R Journal. Both journals are electronic only and peer-reviewed. Comments from reviewers can be very helpful for improving your package and vignette.

• If we just want to provide something very lightweight so folks can easily cite your package, consider the Journal of Open Source Software. This journal has a particularly speedy submission and review process, and is where we published “Welcome to the Tidyverse”, a paper we wrote so that folks could have a single paper to cite and all the tidyverse authors would get some academic credit.