Meta-Analysis Package for R

A comprehensive collection of functions for conducting meta-analyses in R. The package includes functions to calculate various effect sizes or outcome measures, fit equal-, fixed-, random-, and mixed-effects models to such data, carry out moderator and meta-regression analyses, and create various types of meta-analytical plots (e.g., forest, funnel, radial, L'Abbe, Baujat, bubble, and GOSH plots). For meta-analyses of binomial and person-time data, the package also provides functions that implement specialized methods, including the Mantel-Haenszel method, Peto's method, and a variety of suitable generalized linear (mixed-effects) models (i.e., mixed-effects logistic and Poisson regression models). Finally, the package provides functionality for fitting meta-analytic multivariate/multilevel models that account for non-independent sampling errors and/or true effects (e.g., due to the inclusion of multiple treatment studies, multiple endpoints, or other forms of clustering). Network meta-analyses and meta-analyses accounting for known correlation structures (e.g., due to phylogenetic relatedness) can also be conducted. An introduction to the package can be found in Viechtbauer (2010) .

Utility Functions for Working with Random Number Generators

Provides a set of functions for working with Random Number Generators (RNGs). In particular, a generic S4 framework is defined for getting/setting the current RNG, or RNG data that are embedded into objects for reproducibility. Notably, convenient default methods greatly facilitate the way current RNG settings can be changed.

Additional Univariate and Multivariate Distributions

Density, distribution function, quantile function and random generation for a number of univariate and multivariate distributions. This package implements the following distributions: Bernoulli, beta-binomial, beta-negative binomial, beta prime, Bhattacharjee, Birnbaum-Saunders, bivariate normal, bivariate Poisson, categorical, Dirichlet, Dirichlet-multinomial, discrete gamma, discrete Laplace, discrete normal, discrete uniform, discrete Weibull, Frechet, gamma-Poisson, generalized extreme value, Gompertz, generalized Pareto, Gumbel, half-Cauchy, half-normal, half-t, Huber density, inverse chi-squared, inverse-gamma, Kumaraswamy, Laplace, location-scale t, logarithmic, Lomax, multivariate hypergeometric, multinomial, negative hypergeometric, non-standard beta, normal mixture, Poisson mixture, Pareto, power, reparametrized beta, Rayleigh, shifted Gompertz, Skellam, slash, triangular, truncated binomial, truncated normal, truncated Poisson, Tukey lambda, Wald, zero-inflated binomial, zero-inflated negative binomial, zero-inflated Poisson.

Stable Distribution Functions

Density, Probability and Quantile functions, and random number generation for (skew) stable distributions, using the parametrizations of Nolan.

The Beta Random Number and Dirichlet Random Vector Generating Functions

Contains functions to generate random numbers from the beta distribution and random vectors from the Dirichlet distribution.

Bayesian Model Averaging for Random and Fixed Effects Meta-Analysis

Computes the posterior model probabilities for standard meta-analysis models (null model vs. alternative model assuming either fixed- or random-effects, respectively). These posterior probabilities are used to estimate the overall mean effect size as the weighted average of the mean effect size estimates of the random- and fixed-effect model as proposed by Gronau, Van Erp, Heck, Cesario, Jonas, & Wagenmakers (2017, ). The user can define a wide range of non-informative or informative priors for the mean effect size and the heterogeneity coefficient. Moreover, using pre-compiled Stan models, meta-analysis with continuous and discrete moderators with Jeffreys-Zellner-Siow (JZS) priors can be fitted and tested. This allows to compute Bayes factors and perform Bayesian model averaging across random- and fixed-effects meta-analysis with and without moderators. For a primer on Bayesian model-averaged meta-analysis, see Gronau, Heck, Berkhout, Haaf, & Wagenmakers (2021, ).

Regularized Random Forest

Feature Selection with Regularized Random Forest. This package is based on the 'randomForest' package by Andy Liaw. The key difference is the RRF() function that builds a regularized random forest. Fortran original by Leo Breiman and Adele Cutler, R port by Andy Liaw and Matthew Wiener, Regularized random forest for classification by Houtao Deng, Regularized random forest for regression by Xin Guan. Reference: Houtao Deng (2013) .

Parallel and Memory-Efficient Ecological Diversity Metrics

Computes alpha and beta diversity metrics in a parallel, memory-efficient manner using 'C' and 'pthreads'. Implements 51 classic, compositional, and phylogenetic indices including 'Shannon', 'Bray-Curtis', 'Faith', 'JSD', 'Hellinger', 'Robust Aitchison', and the 'UniFrac' family. Provides random sub-sampling for table rarefaction and parses 'Newick' trees into 'phylo' objects. Integrates with data structures from 'phyloseq', 'rbiom', and other common 'bioinformatics' packages. Algorithms are described in Smith 'et al.' (2026) .

Random GO Database

The Gene Ontology (GO) Consortium < https://geneontology.org/> organizes genes into hierarchical categories based on biological process (BP), molecular function (MF) and cellular component (CC, i.e., subcellular localization). Tools such as 'GoMiner' (see Zeeberg, B.R., Feng, W., Wang, G. et al. (2003) ) can leverage GO to perform ontological analysis of microarray and proteomics studies, typically generating a list of significant functional categories. The significance is traditionally determined by randomizing the input gene list to computing the false discovery rate (FDR) of the enrichment p-value for each category. We explore here the novel alternative of randomizing the GO database rather than the gene list.

Fast Estimators for Design-Based Inference

Fast procedures for a small set of commonly-used, design-appropriate estimators with robust standard errors and confidence intervals. Includes estimators for linear regression, instrumental variables regression, difference-in-means, Horvitz-Thompson estimation, and regression improving precision of experimental estimates by interacting treatment with centered pre-treatment covariates introduced by Lin (2013) . Fixed effects are absorbed by alternating projections rather than by dummy expansion, and Horvitz-Thompson variance is computed from the randomization declaration.