Open Research Data

GitHub Template for FAIR and Open Research Data

Transforming research documentation from static afterthought into living, executable environments.

This template provides an infrastructure for documenting, publishing, and archiving research data in line with the principles of FAIR and open science. It is independent of data type or format and implements best practices as outlined in The Turing Way. Core components include automated release management, integrated archiving with Zenodo, structured documentation via Quarto, and long-term accessibility through GitHub Pages.

🤝 Academic Recognition

This approach was presented at the Digital Humanities Tech Symposium (DHTech) 2025 and exemplifies how reusable templates can address persistent challenges in research data management.

Mähr, M., & Twente, M. (2025). One Template to Rule Them All: Interactive Research Data Documentation with Quarto. Digital Humanities Tech Symposium, NOVA University Lisbon. https://maehr.github.io/one-template-to-rule-them-all/.

Why use a template (even for small datasets)?

Conventional data publication as static supplementary files offers limited reproducibility and reusability. This template extends such practices by providing:

📊 Executable narratives that embed code outputs directly into documentation
🚀 Automated deployment and testing that reduces technical overhead
🏛️ Integrated archiving with DOI through seamless Zenodo integration
📈 Scalability and consistency across diverse project types and domains
🔒 Enhanced security with automated vulnerability monitoring
🤝 Community standards following accepted ethics and collaboration practices

Features

Open Research Data

Citable via DOI and CITATION.cff
Automatic long-term archiving with Zenodo
Licensed under AGPL 3.0 and CC BY 4.0 according to The Turing Way
Template for reporting data issues via github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/data_issue_report.yml

Documentation

README.md following www.makeareadme.com and The Turing Way
CHANGELOG.md following keepachangelog.com
Automated changelog generation with git-cliff
Machine-readable project metadata in package.json with npm
Accessible documentation with GitHub Pages and Quarto

Consistency

Code formatting with Prettier for general files, Ruff for Python, and styler and lintr for R
Python type checking with ty
Python dependency management with uv
R dependency management with renv
Commit messages following Conventional Commits enforced via husky
Versioning following Semantic Versioning
Workflow based on fork and pull with GitHub branch protection
Issue tracking via issue templates
File and folder naming conventions following The Turing Way

Security

SECURITY.md following GitHub guidelines
Vulnerability monitoring with GitHub Security Alerts
Repository integrity enforced via GitHub branch protection

Ethics

CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md following the Contributor Covenant
Supportive first interactions via Greetings

Selected Use Cases

The template has been applied across domains including public history, political science, digital humanities, and teaching infrastructures.

🔬 Research Data Documentation

Project	Preview
Stadt.Geschichte.Basel RDM Project documentation platform combining research data management with public history outreach
sgb-figures Reproducible code and annotated data for publication-ready visualisations of research data

📊 Reproducible Research Workflows

Project	Preview
nordatlantisk-ft Voting records from the parliament of Denmark with complete data scraping and analysis pipeline
maxvogt-analysis Multi-step data compilation workflow documentation
Modelling Marti Topic modeling project with interactive visualizations and multimedia content as narrative elements

🎓 Academic Events & Teaching

Project	Preview
Digital History Switzerland 2024 Conference website with program, abstracts, and participant information
Digital Humanities Bern Department hub featuring news, events, and course information
Decoding Inequality 2025 University course website with syllabus and materials

📚 Living Publications & Handbooks

Project	Preview
Non-discriminatory Metadata Comprehensive handbook that functions as both documentation and scholarly publication
One Template to Rule Them All This repository’s own presentation site, demonstrating meta-application

Installation

We recommend using GitHub Codespaces for a reproducible setup.

Getting Started

For Most Users: Reproducible Setup with GitHub Codespaces

Use this template for your project in a new repository on your GitHub account.
Click the green <> Code button at the top right of this repository.
Select the “Codespaces” tab and click “Create codespace on main”. GitHub will now build a container that includes:
- ✅ Node.js (via npm)
- ✅ Python with uv
- ✅ R with renv
- ✅ Quarto
Once the Codespace is ready, open a terminal and preview the documentation:
```
uv run quarto preview
```

Note: All dependencies (Node.js, Python, R, Quarto) are pre-installed in the Codespace.

👩‍💻 Advanced Local Installation

Prerequisites

Node.js
R and Rtools (on Windows)
uv (Python manager)
Quarto

Note: uv installs and manages the correct Python version automatically.

Local Setup Steps

# 1. Install Node.js dependencies
npm install
npm run prepare

# 2. Setup Python environment
uv sync

# 3. Setup R environment
Rscript -e 'install.packages("renv"); renv::restore()'

# 4. Preview documentation
uv run quarto preview

Project Setup

After creating your project from this template (either via Codespaces or local setup), follow the comprehensive checklist in TODO.md to customize and finalize your project. The checklist includes essential setup tasks, optional enhancements, and verification steps to ensure your research data repository is properly configured.

Use

Check that all files are properly formatted.

npm run check

Format all files with Prettier.

npm run format

Format all Python files with Ruff and lint with ty (if applicable).

uv run ruff format
uv run ruff check
uv run ty check

Format all R files with styler and lint with lintr.

styler::style_dir(".")
lintr::lint_dir(".")

Run the wizard to write meaningful commit messages.

npm run commit

Run the wizard to create a CHANGELOG.md.

npm run changelog

Preview the documentation.

quarto preview

Check for broken links in the rendered site (requires _site directory from quarto render).

npm run deadlink-check

Support

This project is maintained by @maehr. Please understand that we can’t provide individual support via email. We also believe that help is much more valuable when it’s shared publicly, so more people can benefit from it.

Type	Platforms
🚨 Bug Reports	GitHub Issue Tracker
📊 Report bad data	GitHub Issue Tracker
📚 Docs Issue	GitHub Issue Tracker
🎁 Feature Requests	GitHub Issue Tracker
🛡 Report a security vulnerability	See SECURITY.md
💬 General Questions	GitHub Discussions

Roadmap

There are currently no changes planned.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our code of conduct and the process for submitting pull requests.

Authors and credits

Moritz Mähr - Initial work - maehr
Moritz Twente - Enhancements - mtwente

See also the list of contributors who contributed to this project.

License

The data in this repository is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License - see the LICENSE-CCBY file for details. By using this data, you agree to give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and to indicate if any modifications have been made.

The code in this repository is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 - see the LICENSE-AGPL file for details. By using this code, you agree to make any modifications available under the same license.