Yes, The Queen is listed as an 'author' on our R packages

Sep 14, 2017 · 2 min read
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A number of people have been surprised to learn that Her Majesty the Queen is listed as an author on a number of our packages. For example, in the SpaDES package:

Author:	Alex M Chubaty [aut, cre],
        Eliot J B McIntire [aut],
        Yong Luo [ctb],
        Steve Cumming [ctb],
        Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as represented by
         the Minister of Natural Resources Canada [cph]

Note, however, that Her Majesty’s role not as a package author (aut) but as the copyright holder (cph).

It’s common practice in many companies to attribute copyright to your employer, and there are several R packages that list a company as copyright holder. For example, take a look at the packages produced by RStudio (e.g., dplyr, ggplot2).

As a Canadian public servant, the Crown holds copyright on our work, including R packages. (Next time you’re reading a scientific paper produced by a federal employee note the copyright – most publishers assign Crown Copyright in these cases instead of the publisher itself maintaining copyright. E.g., Elsevier.)

So while it may be a little surprising to see The Queen listed (as copyright holder) in the authors list for several R packages, assigning copyright to one’s employer is common in general, and expected for public servants in Canada (and likely other Commonwealth countries).

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Alex M Chubaty
Authors
Alex M Chubaty
Ecologist and simulation modeller

Dr. Chubaty is an ecologist, simulation modeller, and co-developer of the open source SpaDES simulation platform. He completed his PhD at Simon Fraser University modelling host selection in mountain pine beetle (MPB), and postdoctoral research at Université Laval and Natural Resources Canada developing forecasting models of MPB spread.

He currently operates FOR-CAST Research & Analytics in Calgary, Canada, which supports the development and integration of models simulating forest vegetation dynamics, wildfire, insect disturbance, and wildlife populations to inform decision making for land management and species at risk. He is an advocate for open source, open data, and reproducible workflows.