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excelerate

The excelerate package accelerates the creation of supplementary tables for research papers.

  • Data Frame Conversion: Easily insert supplementary results as ordered, numbered sheets in Excel spreadsheets.
  • Metadata Integration: Include comprehensive metadata with legends and column descriptions in a README sheet.
  • Numbered Supplementary Files: Automatically organises and numbers sheets and supplementary files for easy reference.
  • Efficient Workflow: Accelerates the preparation of standardised, publication-ready tables.

This makes excelerate an invaluable tool for researchers looking to efficiently prepare tables that meet journal specifications.

Installation 

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ameliaes/excelerate")
library(excelerate)

Usage

1. Append Meta Data

Use append_meta() to add column descriptions to your data frame. This function annotates your data frame with descriptions for each column, which is then inserted as a table in the first sheet (“README” sheet) of your Excel spreadsheet.

# Create metadata for mtcars dataset
mtcars_commented <- append_meta(results = mtcars,
                      colname_descriptions =
                      c(
                      "mpg" = "Miles/(US) gallon",
                      "cyl" = "Number of cylinders",
                      "disp" = "Displacement (cu.in.)",
                      "hp" = "Gross horsepower",
                      "drat" = "Rear axle ratio",
                      "wt" = "Weight (1000 lbs)",
                      "qsec" = "1/4 mile time",
                      "vs" = "Engine (0 = V-shaped, 1 = straight)",
                      "am" = "Transmission (0 = automatic, 1 = manual)",
                      "gear" = "Number of forward gears",
                      "carb" = "Number of carburetors"
                       ))

2. Generate Excel Files

Use the sheet(), spreadsheet() and excelerate() functions to create and save the tables.

# Create spreadsheet specifying tables for each sheet
supplementary_table <- spreadsheet(
  title = "Supplementary Table 1. This is space for a legend title describing
  generally the contents of the file.",
  filename = "path/to/save/example_table.xlsx",
  sheet(mtcars_commented, "Sheet name 1", "Specific legends for each table can 
  go here. eg. a description of the mtcars data frame can go here."),
  sheet(sheet_2_dataframe, "Sheet name 2", "Sheet legend 2"),
  sheet(sheet_3_dataframe, "Sheet name 3", "Sheet legend 3"),
)

# Export to Excel
excelerate(supplementary_table)

Output

The output is an excel file with multiple sheets.

  • The first sheet is called “README” by default. The README sheet cells contain the following in order:
  • The remaining sheets are the data frames supplied to sheet(). In the order each sheet object was supplied to spreadsheet().

Example output from the package vignette at Get Started:

Contributing

This package is in the early stages of development. If you encounter any issues or have feature requests, please contact me at amelia.edmondson-stait@ed.ac.uk or open a GitHub issue. I’ve aimed to write comprehensive tests, but this may not be enough. I encourage you to try and break this package and let me know what you find (pull requests are welcome). User insights are crucial for creating robust software :-)