CRAN and BioConductor are full of very exciting applications. Therefore it can be hard to get visibility amongst the mass. Furthermore it is not always sufficient to refer to a package available on R/BioConductor when this package has not been peer-reviewed.
Publishing software related to an established method can get tricky if you aim for visibility. High impact factor journals are unlikely to accept and those who do are not necessarily visible enough.
So what are the "best" journals to publish such methods?
I would assume that publishing on CRAN or BioConductor does not prevent you from publishing a journal article to help with visibility.
The Journal of Statistical Software (http://www.jstatsoft.org/) could be what you are looking for. The focus of the journal is not so much the method (which can be an established method) but the implementation. From this point of view you can release your package on CRAN and try to get more visibility through a paper in the journal.
I would assume that publishing on CRAN or BioConductor does not prevent you from publishing a journal article to help with visibility.
The Journal of Statistical Software (http://www.jstatsoft.org/) could be what you are looking for. The focus of the journal is not so much the method (which can be an established method) but the implementation. From this point of view you can release your package on CRAN and try to get more visibility through a paper in the journal.
Why don't you add it as a supplementary resource of your publications here in RG?
Let your research do the job. If it is as relevant as you think it is, people will use it.
I think peer-review (in the classical approach) is against the spirit of CRAN or open-access in general. If you make your package available in CRAN (and it is relevant), you will get reviews from peers plus other enthusiasts in a transparent and honest way.
Anyway, if someone is into R, I guess they would first look for an specific package in CRAN.
I think that it depends on your field study. If the package is really relevant for your field you should try in those Journals in such a filed that you already know that are able to publish computer notes/articles. This could help to get more visibility between those not already familiar to R.
I have the experience of developing a package (that analyse the results from an specific kind of experiments) that I've uploaded to CRAN and also published a paper describing it in detail in Molecular Ecology Resources. Peers have reviewed it in detail and concluded that the package is relevant for molecular ecologists and that it was worth to publish it. Since then, I know of several users of the package that never used R before.
For example, Bioinformatics and BMS bioinformatics publish several R/Bioconductor packages in each issue. Take a look to any of them to understand what kind of packages are published and how they are described. But as I said before, it depends on your field.
In addition to the The Journal of Statistical Software (http://www.jstatsoft.org/) already mentioned, another venue that commonly publishes information about new R packages and their implementation is The R Journal (http://journal.r-project.org/) -- a free journal run by The R Project.
I am just following up on this question. Did you publish? If so can you tell me your experience, pros and cons. I would like to publish some of my work, but i am getting push back from some people i work with. They are afraid i will because software support for everyone who wants to use my package.
Following the recommendation of J.D. Carlisle. I would add (after The Journal of Statistical Software http://www.jstatsoft.org/), the Journal: Methods in Ecology and Evolution (http://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2041-210X/) and also PeerJ Computer Science (https://peerj.com/computer-science/). The latter is a peer-review journal but still not indexed (but maybe soon) in databases as Web of Science or Scopus. As is the case of The R Journal (http://journal.r-project.org/)
José Padarian I don''t think peer-review process is against the spirit of open-access. And publishing the journal and supplementing it with package source is the best way in my opinion. In my experience I have seen people taking open source packages for granted unless it is mandated to cite them. Not everyone is aware of publication ethics and why it is important to cite the original work.
It depends a bit on how much work you want to put into a publication and what your goal is, I suppose. I published one package in "The journal of Open Research Software" (https://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com/). For a very quick solution one could also chose "The Journal of Open Source Software" (https://joss.theoj.org/). In the latter, the publication may be as short as an abstract. The JOSS fills a gap for people who are predominantly development focused. Of course, the reputation of these two (both peer reviewed) is lower than JSTATSOFT etc.
If the package can be interested for a broad audience, then you can also try Nature Methods, see for example https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-019-0470-3
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