polisciR

a package of templates for stuff that political scientists make

Table of Contents

1. About The Project
2. Getting Started
3. Prerequisites
4. Installation
5. Usage
6. Roadmap
7. Contributing
8. License
9. Contact
10. Acknowledgments

About the Project

This package includes templates to help political scientists create the things that political scientists need to create. Currently, the package includes the following templates:

• manuscript: for those who already know what should go in a political science research paper, this template will create a pdf document in the style of a mid-2020s political scientist.
• guided_manuscript: for those who need a bit of help turning their ideas into a political science research paper, this one contains default content to walk you through the process.

The manuscript templates in this package, are based on the bookdown format. They rely upon LaTeX templates (included in the folder that's created with your new manuscript) that give your manuscript that mid-2020s political science look. These LaTeX templates are highly annotated, so you can peek inside to adjust things like line spacing, indents, and more. But you don't have to. When you're writing, you can still use markdown syntax R code to customize things a bit.

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Getting Started

This is an example of how you may give instructions on setting up your project locally. To get a local copy up and running follow these simple example steps.

Prerequisites

To get up and running, you'll need to make sure you've got a few things handled: Then, ensure that you've installed the following:

• R and RStudio (comes installed with pandoc, which is good because you need it)

• tinytex (a tiny LaTeX) and rmarkdown (markdown for R)

  install.packages(c('tinytex', 'rmarkdown'))
  tinytex::install_tinytex()
  
  # check that it worked after restart
  tinytex::is_tinytex()

Installation

Once you've ensured that you've got all the prerequisites organized, you can install the polisciR package.

install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("studycourts/polisciR")

If you get an error message that you have bad credentials, you may need to generate a new PAT token. You can do this by going to github/settings/tokens. Generate a new token with the repo and read:packages scopes. Click "Generate token" and copy it. From there, run the following in the R console:

gitcreds::gitcreds_set()

When prompted, paste your new credential. Then repeat the installation:

remotes::install_github("studycourts/polisciR")

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Usage

To use polisciR templates from inside RStudio, start by creating a new file through the menus: File -> New File -> R Markdown. You'll see a dialog box where you can select from one of the available templates:

You can use the templates outside of RStudio, but you’ll also need Pandoc (find some help here). Then, you can use the rmarkdown::draft() function to create your political science stuff:

rmarkdown::draft(
    "MyManuscript.Rmd", template = "manuscript", package = "polisciR"
)

This will create a folder containing a your new Rmd file and all of the other things you'll need to render it.

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Contributing

The original templates were created by a regular, run-of-the-mill political scientist. She's done her best, but can always use help. If you've developed a helpful template (or just have suggestions on how to make the existing polisciR templates better), here are some ways you can pitch in:

Suggest an idea

You may not feel confident enough or may not have time to contribute a whole template. By opening a new issue, you can share your ideas and see if someone else can help make it happen. Because the author of this package is just one person, though, she might not be able to get to it in a timely manner ever. But hey, it's worth a shot!

Contribute your template

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated. If you've got a template that you find useful for political science-y things, add it to the pile! You'll start by opening a new pull request (PR):

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

If your template isn't quite ready for prime time, you can use a draft PR to let everyone know what you're up to (and perhaps find some folks who are willing to help). Once it's ready to go, just submit it for review and we'll get it merged in.

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Top contributors:

Roadmap

• Add a conference presentation template
• Add a CV template that embeds .bib files

See the open issues for a full list of proposed features (and known issues).

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License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt for more information.

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Contact

Rebecca Gill - Bluesky: @rebeccagill.bsky.social - email: [email protected]{.email}

Project Link: https://github.com/studycourts/polisciR

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Acknowledgments

• Steven V. Miller. I got the idea for this and much of the original code from his stevetemplates package.
• Lab-R-Torian. The address block is adapted from this idea.
• Thomas J. Leeper. This is the source of the BibTeX style file used in these templates: apsa-leeper.bst.
• Othneil Drew. The README file you're looking at right now is thanks to this great template.
• hexSticker. The adorable logo was made here.
• Freepic. The sparkles in the polisciR package icon are from here.
• A lot more folks whose ideas made their way into the code years ago before I ever thought about making a package out of my goofy little templates.

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