Expanding the Editorial Team: Alec Robitaille and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan Join as Editors

At rOpenSci, we’re continually grateful for the support and engagement of our community, who help make research open-source stronger, more inclusive, and more collaborative. The software peer review program continues to grow, and today we announce that our editorial team keeps expanding:

We’re excited to welcome Alec Robitaille and Lucy D’Agostino McGowan as new editors. Alec joins our general review team, and Lucy our statistical software review team. Their expertise and dedication will help sustain and strengthen software peer review, ensuring that software reviews continue to meet the highest standards of quality, transparency, and impact.

Meet our new editors!

Alec Robitaille

Alec is a graduate student at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada) studying foraging ecology, habitat selection and social networks in caribou and other ungulates. He has been involved in many projects along the way, from measuring muskrat habitat and lake ice dynamics at McGill University to estimating drought sensitivity in Canada’s forests with the Canadian Forestry Service. Passionate about teaching open science and programming, he regularly mentors peers, runs workshops, develops example repositories, and organizes a Bayesian stats colearning group. He maintains the package spatsoc (reviewed by rOpenSci in 2018) and has developed smaller packages with diverse applications including remote sensing (irg), social networks (hwig), camera trap monitoring (camtrapmonitoring), and animal movement (distanceto). He reviewed the ohun, chopin, and emodnet.wfs packages for rOpenSci, guest edited for the rredlist package and is currently handling the reviews for the ActiGlobe, and saperlipopette packages.

Alec on GitHub, Website.

I first connected with the rOpenSci community through the review process for the package spatsoc in 2018 as part of our manuscript submission at Methods in Ecology and Evolution. During the review, I was thoroughly impressed by how welcoming the community was, and how effective the process was in helping me learn how to improve the package. rOpenSci is a landmark in the R and open science ecosystems with an ever evolving community to learn from and to be a part of. I am very grateful to be given the opportunity to continue contributing to rOpenSci in this new role as editor.

< footer class="blockquote-footer">Alec L. Robitaille

Lucy D’Agostino McGowan

Lucy D’Agostino McGowan is an associate professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences at Wake Forest University. She received her PhD in Biostatistics from Vanderbilt University and completed her postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on causal inference, statistical communication, analytic design theory, and data science pedagogy. Lucy can be found blogging at livefreeordichotomize.com, on Blue Sky @LucyStats.bsky.social, and podcasting on Casual Inference.

Lucy on GitHub, Website.

I am so thrilled to join the rOpenSci editorial team! I love the rOpenSci community and mission and am grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

< footer class="blockquote-footer">Lucy D’Agostino McGowan

About the Software Peer Review Program

rOpenSci’s software peer review program brings together volunteers to collaboratively review scientific and statistical software according to transparent, constructive, and open standards. Editors manage submissions, coordinate reviewers, and help guide packages through review to improve code quality, documentation, and usability.

This program is possible thanks to the many community members: authors submitting their packages, reviewers volunteering their time and expertise, and editors like Alec and Lucy who help managing reviews and maintaining a supportive process.

Get Involved

Are you considering submitting your package for review? These resources will help:

• About rOpenSci Software Peer Review;
• Browse the online book rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review and rOpenSci Statistical Software Peer Review;
• Read public software review threads on GitHub

Would you like to review packages? Fill out the rOpenSci Reviewer Sign-Up Form to volunteer to review.

Welcome again Alec and Lucy! We’re thrilled to have you join the editorial team.