In LingshuHu/healthforum: Scrape Patient Forum Data

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)

Submitting Author: Lingshu Hu; Michael W. Kearney (LingshuHu@github_handle)
Repository: https://github.com/LingshuHu/healthforum
Version submitted: 0.1.0
Editor: TBD
Reviewer 1: TBD
Reviewer 2: TBD
Archive: TBD
Version accepted: TBD

Paste the full DESCRIPTION file inside a code block below:

Package: healthforum
Type: Package
Title: Scrape Patient Forum Data
Version: 0.1.0
Authors@R: c(
    person("Lingshu", "Hu", ,
      email = "lingshu.hu@hotmail.com", role = c("aut", "cre"),
      comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-0304-882X")), 
    person("Michael W.", "Kearney", ,
      email = "kearneymw@missouri.edu", role = c("ctb"),
      comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0002-0730-4694")))
Description: Scrape data from Patient Forum <https://patient.info/forums> by entering urls. It will return a data frame containing text, user names, like counts, reply counts, etc.
License: MIT + file LICENSE
Encoding: UTF-8
LazyData: true
Imports: 
    rvest,
    magrittr,
    xml2,
    purrr,
    tokenizers,
    stringr,
    tibble
Depends: R (>= 3.5.0)
RoxygenNote: 6.1.1
Suggests: 
    testthat (>= 2.1.0),
    knitr,
    rmarkdown
VignetteBuilder: knitr

Scope

Please indicate which category or categories from our package fit policies this package falls under: (Please check an appropriate box below. If you are unsure, we suggest you make a pre-submission inquiry.):
- [x] data retrieval
- [x] data extraction
- [ ] database access
- [x] data munging
- [ ] data deposition
- [ ] workflow automataion
- [ ] version control
- [ ] citation management and bibliometrics
- [ ] scientific software wrappers
- [ ] database software bindings
- [ ] geospatial data
- [ ] text analysis
Explain how and why the package falls under these categories (briefly, 1-2 sentences):
Data retrieval: this package is used to download data from patient.info forum.
Data extraction: the data obtained from Patient forum is unstructured, including text, date, behavior traces, etc.
Data munging: this package parses the unstructured data to dataframes.
Who is the target audience and what are scientific applications of this package?
Health communication scholars or researchers who are interested in user-generated health information.
Are there other R packages that accomplish the same thing? If so, how does yours differ or meet our criteria for best-in-category?
To our best knowledge, there is no other R package designed to obtain data from patient.info forum.
If you made a pre-submission enquiry, please paste the link to the corresponding issue, forum post, or other discussion, or @tag the editor you contacted.

Technical checks

Confirm each of the following by checking the box. This package:

[x] does not violate the Terms of Service of any service it interacts with.
[x] has a CRAN and OSI accepted license.
[x] contains a README with instructions for installing the development version.
[x] includes documentation with examples for all functions.
[x] contains a vignette with examples of its essential functions and uses.
[x] has a test suite.
[x] has continuous integration, including reporting of test coverage using services such as Travis CI, Coveralls and/or CodeCov.

Publication options

[x] Do you intend for this package to go on CRAN?
[x] Do you wish to automatically submit to the Journal of Open Source Software? If so:

JOSS Options

[x] The package has an obvious research application according to JOSS's definition.
- [x] The package contains a paper.md matching JOSS's requirements with a high-level description in the package root or in inst/.
- [x] The package is deposited in a long-term repository with the DOI:
- (Do not submit your package separately to JOSS)

[ ] Do you wish to submit an Applications Article about your package to Methods in Ecology and Evolution? If so:

MEE Options

[ ] The package is novel and will be of interest to the broad readership of the journal.
[ ] The manuscript describing the package is no longer than 3000 words.
[ ] You intend to archive the code for the package in a long-term repository which meets the requirements of the journal (see MEE's Policy on Publishing Code)
(Scope: Do consider MEE's Aims and Scope for your manuscript. We make no guarantee that your manuscript will be within MEE scope.)
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(Please do not submit your package separately to Methods in Ecology and Evolution)