Modeling the Impact of R Packages Using Dependency and Contributor Networks.

This paper aims to identify the factors that affect the impact of Open Source Software (OSS), measured by number of downloads and citations, with a case study of R packages. We generate the dependency and contributor networks of the packages using data collected from Depsy.org, and develop statistical models that use the network characteristics, as well as author and package attributes. We find that there are common network and package attributes that are important in determining both the number of downloads and citations of a package, including degree, closeness and betweenness centralities, as well as package attributes such as number of authors and number of commits.