Construction of a virtual environment of economic modeling

Science communication is a primary mechanism for the existence and development of science. Scientists should have the opportunity to exchange thoughts with each other, so that the results, that become classic in one area, can be known in the related fields of science. To create an information environment that does not only unite scientists from different cities and countries, but also provides them with a common platform for research in the field of regional development is an urgent task. The article notes the wide spread of the Internet as a means of communication between people, including researchers. It describes concepts of virtual research laboratories and a virtual research environment. It presents a classification of statistics packages of data analysis. The work contains a brief review of the systems of different types (SAS, SPSS, STATISTICA, Stata, R). It is worthwhile selecting R open package as a basis for building a unified information environment for virtual research. This will help create a universal system of statistical processing of data with unlimited possibilities for expansion and application in different fields.