[DISCUSSION] listing of NHS-R Community in packages

[Lextuga007]

Highlighted in this issue nhs-r-community/NHSRtheme#36 by @anyaferguson we can only use the logo in pkgdown if NHS-R Community is listed as a certain role in the description file of packages. either maintainer ("cre"), author ("aut") or funder ("fnd"). Which would be the best option? It is currently only copyright holder ("cph") in some packages.

This is open to discussion and then once agreed will be added into the NHS-R Way book.

[anyaferguson]

"cre: the creator or maintainer, the person you should bother if you have problems. Despite being short for “creator”, this is the correct role to use for the current maintainer, even if they are not the initial creator of the package." - From R packages (2e) https://r-pkgs.org/description.html.

I feel like NHSR community could be seen as a maintainer, since if there is any problems with the package, we could be contacted to resolve it. The book also says that there must be at least one maintainer, so I think it would be ok to have multiple.

[TimTaylor]

I'd add something like the following to the Description: section of the DESCRIPTION file:

This package is part of the NHS R Community suite of packages (https://nhsrcommunity.com/).

I don't think "cph" should be used as the code authors (and/or possibly their parent organisations depending on policies etc) should maintain copyright.

Generally I think it's probably best to leave them out of the Authors section especially for packages that could end up on CRAN.

Re: the specific point of a logo not related to the authors in the footer. I'd raise that as a feature request in pkgdown. That said I wonder if it would already work if you referenced some html directly in the component section (not sure 🤔 ).

[Lextuga007]

Two maintainers is a great idea. I'd always prefer to have a person listed so two people and NHS-R would be good. Being predominantly volunteer based in support is likely people may get too busy to maintain but equally NHS-R isn't an organisation that can push anyone into that role or pick up any issues.

[TimTaylor]

Two maintainers is a great idea. I'd always prefer to have a person listed so two people and NHS-R would be good. Being predominantly volunteer based in support is likely people may get too busy to maintain but equally NHS-R isn't an organisation that can push anyone into that role or pick up any issues.

If the package is going to CRAN they will want only one maintainer unfortunately:

The mandatory ‘Maintainer’ field should give a single name followed by a valid (RFC 2822) email address in angle brackets. It should not end in a period or comma. This field is what is reported by the maintainer function and used by bug.report. For a CRAN package it should be a person, not a mailing list and not a corporate entity: do ensure that it is valid and will remain valid for the lifetime of the package.

If not to CRAN you can do anything but, in that situation, I wonder if it's best/easiest to list the maintainers / NHS org contact at the top of the README. Then it would be clear in both the pkgdown site and the git repository.

[Lextuga007]

@all-contributors please add @TimTaylor for ideas

[allcontributors]

@Lextuga007

I've put up a pull request to add @TimTaylor! 🎉