Lit*Comp
One of my current projects is drafting an open-source book, with the working title Lit*Comp: literate computing for a new era of research. This is currently in the skeleton-outline stage, but my aim is to publish the draft chapters as I write them, with a comments session (powered by GitHub discussions) to inform feedback, review, and redrafting. The below gives a back-of-the-book blurb.
Lit*Comp: literate computing for a new era of research
This book aims to provide a brief introduction to the concept of literate computing, which involves embedding explanatory text alongside code. This improves the readability of the research code, makes it easier to provide context and caveats alongside data analysis, and can improve the overall accessibility of the research.
[Literate computing] interweaves executable code with more conventional media such as prose, images, and video. - Fog and Klokmose (2019)
Book content
The book starts out by introducing general concepts and theory to support literate computing Part 1: Concepts and background, and providing context for how these concepts can support data feminism (D’Ignazio and Klein 2020) and reproducible research when implemented thoughtfully.
Part 2: Practical tools provides an overview of some of the tools available to implement literate computing into your work. We focus on Open Source and free options in order to ensure the content in this book is accessible. This does not constitute as an endorsement of the companies providing these technologies or the tools themselves. We attempt to provide a balanced outlook when describing the different options available, and have no conflicts of interest related to the tools described.
The final section of the book Part 3: Workflows provides guidance on how to incorporate the tools and strategies introduced in earlier sections of the book into your day to day research and data science.
Who is this book for?
This book is aimed at:
- Researchers who are starting out using notebooks in their data science work
- Researchers who want to use notebooks and literate computing in their research workflows but are unsure of how to effectively implement them
- Researchers who want to share their analysis and results effectively with colleagues, students, and the wider public
References
Citation
@online{murphy_quinlan2024,
author = {Murphy Quinlan, Maeve},
title = {Lit*Comp},
date = {2024-11-28},
url = {https://murphyqm.github.io/docs/projects/lit-comp/index.html},
langid = {en}
}