Born in the late 20th century, R has become one of the most widely used software environments for statistical computing and graphics, undergoing substantial transformation alongside advances in information technology and the rise of data-intensive research. By integrating large-scale usage data from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) with bibliometric records from the Scopus database, this study provides a comprehensive empirical review of the R ecosystem between 2005 and 2024. We examine long-term trends in R adoption, the functional structure and popularity patterns of its package ecosystem, disciplinary applications in academia, and collaboration behaviors within the developer community. The results reveal sustained growth in both R software and package downloads, with package usage showing more stable and continuous expansion over time. A keyword co-occurrence analysis indicates that the ecosystem is organized around a dense statistical core, closely connected with diverse modeling frameworks, modern machine learning techniques, and application-oriented functionalities. Bibliometric evidence further demonstrates the widespread and growing adoption of R across scientific disciplines, particularly in agricultural and biological sciences, environmental science, medicine, and the social sciences. In addition, collaboration analysis shows that multi-author packages are more prevalent and tend to achieve greater reuse and higher download activity, highlighting the role of collective development in sustaining the vitality and long-term relevance of the R ecosystem. Overall, these findings position R as a resilient, community-driven platform whose evolution continues to be shaped by interdisciplinary collaboration and open-source innovation.
Copyright: © 2026 Huang, Lou. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.