inst/extras/eurostat_description.md

In ropengov/eurostat: Tools for Eurostat Open Data

The eurostat R package is a mature collection of algorithms that facilitate efficient retrieval, analysis and visualization of data from Eurostat open data portal. The package has emerged from international non-profit collaboration between academic researchers and R developers.

While we are backing up our work by pragmatic case studies and demonstrations, the overall scope of our contribution is wider and it opens up new opportunities for data scientists. R is one of the most popular open statistical programming and data science environments currently and it is widely used in research, government, data journalism, and industry. Our proposed eurostat R package is facilitating access to the European open data resources. Its popularity among the data science community has been steadily growing, with 50% increase in annual downloads since the first version in 2015. The present mature version of the package was formally published in R Journal in 2018. It is now available in the CRAN software repository and has found a considerable number of users in research and government, with roughly 20,000 downloads in 2018.

The package provides practically tested open source tools that allow seamless integration of the eurostat open data resources and complementary data sources in open statistical environments where the data can be analyzed with the latest research algorithms. We have developed various case studies that demonstrate how these tools can facilitate the development and sharing of reproducible and transparent statistical workflows and provide insights into European demographics. Therefore, instead of a particular case study or demonstration, our main proposed innovation is the development of general-purpose algorithmic tools that provide enhanced opportunities for the utilization of European open data resources.

ropengov/eurostat documentation built on Jan. 19, 2024, 8:10 p.m.