useR! abstract review: what the program committee look for

Heather Turner

July 3, 2017

What’s special about useR!?

Meeting of academic and non-academic useR!s
Three contributed presentation formats
- regular talk
- lightning talk
- posters
Selective review process for all formats

What do the program committee look for?

The contribution of the abstract

Contribution: something new, related to R, originating from the presenters, using sound scientific practices, that the participants can take away from the conference and apply to their own work.

Novelty

Examples
- A new package
- A substantial development of a package
- A case study
- A new community initiative
- New resources for community
The contribution should be new since last useR!
Preference may be given to topics not yet presented at other R conferences
Novelty will be judged relative to other contributions

Originating from the presenters

Presenters should present their own work.

Presentations about other people’s packages should contain a new contribution.

Using sound scientific practices

Evidence of reliable methodology
- peer reviewed publication
- evidence of testing/evaluation
- track record of authors
Evidence of good programming practice
- CRAN/Bioconductor publication
- examples, vignette, tests

Maturity of project

Package/methods should be available for use, or at least beta-testing.
Packages
- On CRAN/Bioconductor
- On Github/R-Forge/similar, with evidence of active development
Methods
- Documentation (paper/blog/vignette) enabling replication

Different Formats

Regular talks
- novel, mature, substantial contributions
Lightning talk
- fun/short topics, case studies
Posters
- case studies, works-in-progress, projects for discussion/feedback

Rejection/reallocation rates

Summary

When preparing your abstract
- Be explicit about contribution to R community
- Link to supporting materials, give references
- Be active prior to and during review period
Feel free to ask me further questions about review process/useR! program