In ropensci/codemetar: Generate 'CodeMeta' Metadata for R Packages

Sys.setenv("ON_CRAN" = "true")
knitr::opts_chunk$set(comment="")
if(grepl("windows", tolower(Sys.info()[["sysname"]])))
  knitr::opts_chunk$set(comment="", error =TRUE)

codemetar: generate codemeta metadata for R packages

Why create a codemeta.json for your package?

Installation and usage requirements

Create a codemeta.json in one function call

Keep codemeta.json up-to-date

A brief intro to common terms we'll use:

Linked data: We often use different words to mean the same thing. And sometimes the same word to mean different things. Linked data seeks to address this issue by using URIs (i.e. URLs) to make this explicit.
context: No one likes typing out long URLs all the time. So instead, the context of a JSON-LD file ("@context" element) gives us the context for the terms we use, that is, the root URL. Usually schema.org but domain specific ones also (eg codemeta)
Schema.org: A major initiative led by Google and other search engines to define a simple and widely used context to link data on the web through a catalogue of standard metadata fields
The CodeMeta Project: an academic led community initiative to formalise the metadata fields included in typical software metadata records and introduce important fields that did not have clear equivalents. The codemeta crosswalk provides an explicit map between the metadata fields used by a broad range of software repositories, registries and archives
JSON-LD: While 'linked data' can be represented in many different formats, these have consistently proven a bit tricky to use, either for consumers or developers or both. JSON-LD provides a simple adaptation of the JSON format, which has proven much more popular with both audiences, that allows it to express (most) linked-data concepts. It is now the format of choice for expressing linked data by Google and many others. Any JSON-LD file is valid JSON, and any JSON file can be treated as JSON-LD.
codemetar: The CodeMeta Project has created tools in several languages to implement the CodeMeta Crosswalk (using JSON-LD) and help extract software metadata into codemeta.json records. codemetar is one such tool, focused on R and R packages.