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/