Check out this solution to keeping library versions straight in R

[kdahlquist]

R has the same problem we do with node in terms keeping versions of libraries straight. Someone wrote a package in R that automatically loads versions of packages from a particular date and solves the problem of scripts not running correctly because of a version problem. I don't know if there's something equivalent for npm.

These are links to the two posts with the problem and solution.
http://datacolada.org/95
http://datacolada.org/100