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(This article was first published on <strong><a href="http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2018/07/cii-certification-for-r-packages.html"> Revolutions</a></strong>, and kindly contributed to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/">R-bloggers)</a> </div>
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<p><a rel="nofollow" href="http://revolution-computing.typepad.com/.a/6a010534b1db25970b022ad3850a40200d-pi" target="_blank"><img alt="Cii_badge-300x300" title="Cii_badge-300x300" src="http://revolution-computing.typepad.com/.a/6a010534b1db25970b022ad3850a40200d-200wi"></a>There are more than 12,000 packages for R available on CRAN, and many others available on Github and elsewhere. But how can you be sure that a given R package follows best development practices for high-quality, secure software?</p>
<p>Based on a <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-consortium.org/blog/2018/07/26/should-r-consortium-recommend-cii-best-practices-badge-for-r-packages-latest-survey-results" target="_blank">recent survey of R users related to challenges in selecting R packages</a>, the R Consortium now recommends a way for package authors to self-validate that their package follows best practices for development. The <a rel="nofollow" href="https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en" target="_blank">CII Best Practices Badge Program</a>, developed by the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative, defines a <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/coreinfrastructure/best-practices-badge/blob/master/doc/criteria.md" target="_blank">set of criteria</a> that open-source software projects should follow for quality and security. The criteria relate to open-source license standards, documentation, secure development and delivery practices, version control and bug reporting practices, build and test processes, and much more. R packages that meet these standards are a signal to R users that can be relied upon, and as the standards document notes:</p>
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<p>There is no set of practices that can guarantee that software will never have defects or vulnerabilities; even formal methods can fail if the specifications or assumptions are wrong. Nor is there any set of practices that can guarantee that a project will sustain a healthy and well-functioning development community. However, following best practices can help improve the results of projects. For example, some practices enable multi-person review before release, which can both help find otherwise hard-to-find technical vulnerabilities and help build trust and a desire for repeated interaction among developers from different organizations.</p>
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<p>Developers can self-validate their packages (free of charge) using an online tool to check their adherence to the standards and get a &quot;passing&quot;, &quot;silver&quot; or &quot;gold&quot; rating. Passing projects are eligible to display the badge (shown above) as a sign of quality and security, and <a rel="nofollow" href="https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en/projects?gteq=100" target="_blank">almost 200 projects</a> qualify as of this writing. A number of R packages have already gone through or started the certification process, including <a rel="nofollow" href="https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en/projects/1927" target="_blank">ggplot2</a>, R Consortium projects <a rel="nofollow" href="https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en/projects/1928" target="_blank">covr</a> and <a rel="nofollow" href="https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en/projects/1882" target="_blank">DBI</a>, and the built-in R package Matrix <a rel="nofollow" href="https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en/projects/1917" target="_blank">Matrix</a>. For more details on how R packages can get to a passing certification, and the R Consortium survey they led to the recommendation, see the R Consortium blog post at the link below.</p>
<p>R Consortium: <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-consortium.org/blog/2018/07/26/should-r-consortium-recommend-cii-best-practices-badge-for-r-packages-latest-survey-results" target="_blank">Should R Consortium Recommend CII Best Practices Badge for R Packages: Latest Survey Results</a></p>
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