Conferences

News: useR! 2024 will be a hybrid conference, taking place 8-11 July 2024 in Salzburg, Austria.


The R Foundation actively supports two conference series, organized regularly by members from the R community:

  • useR!, a forum for the R user community.
  • DSC, a platform for developers of statistical software.

A rough outline of the format for the respective conferences is given below; both conference formats were developed by the Austrian Association for Statistical Computing (AASC) in cooperation with the R Foundation for Statistical Computing.

The R Foundation also endorses a small number of conferences for special events or to encourage the development of the local R community in under-supported regions.

Conference-related activities are co-ordinated by the “R Foundation Conference Committee” (RFCC) currently consisting of Julie Josse (Ecole Polytechnique), Heather Turner and Achim Zeileis (Universität Innsbruck) plus ex officio secretary and treasurer of the R Foundation. The RFCC can be contacted by email at R-conferences@r-project.org.

The R Foundation has a policy requiring a code of conduct at R conferences.


useR! — International R User Conference

useR logo

useR! 2024 will be a hybrid conference from July 8 to July 11, with opportunities to participate as an online attendee or to attend in person at Wyndham Grand, Salzburg, Austria. For regular updates follow @useR_conf@mastodon.social on Mastodon or ‘user-conf’ on LinkedIn.

Calls for proposals to organize useR! will be announced on this page, the R Foundation Mastodon account, @R_Foundation@fosstodon.org, the R Foundation LinkedIn page and the @_R_Foundation X account.

Announcements regarding useR! (e.g. call for abstracts, call for proposals to host useR!) are also made on the @_useRconf X account and the low-volume R-Announce mailing list (posts to R-Announce go to the R-help mailing list as well).

useR! is the main meeting of the R user and developer community, its program consists of both invited and user-contributed presentations:

  • The invited keynote lectures cover a broad spectrum of topics ranging from technical and R-related computing issues to general statistical topics of current interest.
  • The user-contributed presentations are submitted as abstracts prior to the conference and may be related to (virtually) any R-related topic. The presentations are typically organized in sessions of regular talks, lightning talks, and poster presentations.
  • The RFCC welcomes expressions of interest from potential local organisers. Groups thinking about hosting a useR! conference are welcome to contact the RFCC by email at R-conferences@r-project.org.

Usually, no proceedings are published for useR! conferences, though slides and videos are often available on the conference websites. From 2022, videos can be found on the useR! YouTube channel.

The useR! Knowledgebase provides a guide for anyone involved in organizing useR!, while the useR! Infoboard provides data on past useR! conferences. These resources are maintained by useR! organizers past and present.

DSC — Directions in Statistical Computing

DSC logo

DSC is a conference for the developers of statistical software and researchers in statistical computing which is somewhat focused on but not exclusively devoted to R. It aims at providing a platform for exchanging ideas about developments in statistical computing (rather than `only’ the usage of statistical software for applications).

DSC has had two different incarnations. The first was a biennial conference series from 1999 to 2009 with open registration, an open call for papers and peer-reviewed conference proceedings. After a 5 year hiatus, DSC resumed in 2014 as an annual conference coinciding with the General Assembly of the R Foundation. For 2020, speakers will be invited, but there will be open registration.

Other Conferences Endorsed by The R Foundation

Special Events

Events in under-supported regions

Selected conferences are endorsed by the R Foundation to encourage the development of useR!-like meetings in regions currently beyond the reach of useR!. The aim is to strengthen the local useR community, particularly in academic and scientific research. These meetings may have official languages other than English.

  • R@IISA [English] December, India. Bangalore, 2022; Mumbai, 2019.
  • ConectaR [Spanish] January, 2019, San José, Costa Rica.
  • LatinR [Spanish/Portuguese/English] September 2018, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
  • R Day [Portuguese] May 2018, Curitiba, Brazil.