3 Search for packages

You can search for packages via https://r-universe.dev/search/ using keywords or author names. If you want to use an exact phrase like “weather data”, you must use double quotes, not single quotes, around it. The search bar includes an arrow-down button that allows to access the advanced search fields.

Search landing page, with a search box — Search landing page

Search landing page, displaying advanced search fields like author and keywords — Search landing page, advanced fields

Search results for 'missing-data' — Search results for ‘“missing-data”’

Search results for 'author:jeroen json' — Search results for ‘author:jeroen json’

Search results for 'exports:tojson' — Search results for ‘exports:toJSON’

3.1 How is the package-rank score calculated?

The exact algorithm is a work-in-progress and will change. At the time of writing it includes:

Number of dependents (that is to say, recursive reverse dependencies);
Number of stars on Github;
Number of unique contributors;
Commit activity over the last year;
Downloads per month from CRAN or Bioconductor mirrors;
Number of files on GitHub that mention ’library(pkgname)’.

You can browse scores and metrics for all packages.

We plan to keep updating the algorithm as R-universe matures and better data becomes available.

3.2 Why is a package sometimes listed twice?

If a source package fails to build (which means something is very wrong) then you see a red “build failure” message. If there was a previous successful build, it is kept there as well for users to install.

3.3 Which packages get included in search?

In R-universe, a given R package can be included in many different registries. To prevent duplicates, search only shows packages from the universes of the upstream GitHub owners of the package, and not from third parties that have added a copy of the package to their registry.

More specifically, search results include packages for which:

The GitHub owner is the same as the universe, for example packages under https://jeroen.r-universe.dev from GitHub user https://github.com/jeroen/. This also includes all CRAN packages.
Alternatively: to opt-in packages for which the universe name is different from the GitHub owner, the package author must include the full user.r-universe.dev in the URL field of the DESCRIPTION file. For example, if the registry from https://jeroen.r-universe.dev has a package https://github.com/elsewhere/mypkg, but the URL field in the DESCRIPTION includes e.g. https://jeroen.r-universe.dev or https://jeroen.r-universe.dev/mypkg, then it also shows up in the search results.