Templates & Tools

SCIproj — Create Research Compendia

A research compendium is a standardised project format that organises data, code, and documentation so that analyses are transparent, reproducible, and reusable. It forms the foundation for FAIR-compliant research.

The R package SCIproj creates a fully set up research compendium with a single command – including folder structure, version control, dependency management, and machine-readable metadata.

Key Features

  • Standardised project structure – clear separation of raw data (data/), processed data (data_processed/), code (R/, scripts/), results (output/), and documentation (docs/)
  • Dependency management with renv – exact package versions are recorded so that analyses remain reproducible years later
  • Pipeline workflow with targets – automatic dependency tracking and selective re-execution of changed analysis steps
  • Machine-readable citation – CITATION.cff for standardised metadata (compatible with GitHub, Zenodo, ORCID)
  • Data documentation – DATA_SOURCES.md template for tracking provenance, licence, and DOI of all datasets
  • Version control – automatic Git initialisation with sensible .gitignore entries
  • Optional extensions – Docker support, GitHub integration, and continuous integration

Installation

NoteAvailable on CRAN

Version 1.0.0 was published on CRAN on 18 March 2026.

# From CRAN (recommended)
install.packages("SCIproj")

# Or the development version from GitHub
if (!require("pak")) install.packages("pak")
pak::pkg_install("saskiaotto/SCIproj")

Quick Start

library("SCIproj")

# Create a new research compendium
create_proj("my_research_project")

This creates a fully set up project directory with all the components mentioned above. Further options and configuration details can be found in the documentation on GitHub.

Background

SCIproj follows established standards and recommendations for open and reproducible research: