STAPLE: Software for Scientists

Erin M. Buchanan

STAPLE

Welcome!

• Project management: were any of us ever actually trained for this?
• Individual projects with one or two other local collaborators can be quite complex with many moving parts
• Now, add other people, institutions, geopolitical regions, languages, cultures, and the complexity increases exponentially
• We’ve tried it all:
  • Google docs!
  • Crazy excel sheets!

Why Software?

• Project management software exists: Asana, Monday, Clickup, Trello
  • That’s not designed for scientists
• Classroom software actually works ok (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.)
  • But it ain’t great
• What if we could have our own software, designed for our own problems?

Why Software?

• Creating Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) outputs is … hard
• New rules and laws that make metadata a necessity
  • Lots of work, no good standards across science
  • We probably have to be forced to do it
• As authorship –> contributorship becomes more complicated, we should be able to say who did what on a project and when

What is the Mission?

• Project Management software that allows you to document your project to improve transparency
• STAPLE (like the stapler ok?): Science Tracking Across the Project Lifespan
• This project has been funded by NASA and the Psychological Science Accelerator

STAPLE Structure

Projects

Projects

Elements

Tasks

Tasks

Metadata

Timeline

• Grant started October 2023
• MVP due October 2024
• Release as open source software
• Create a sustainable plan for our hosted version
• Community improvement
• Find more grant $

Last Notes

• Join our slack!
• We need beta testers and people to interview about the project
• Documentation, app, and more at https://staple.science/