GNU Emacs and Org-mode for reproducible research

Hi there, this is a repo containing the content of a presentation I gave at the Research Software Developers Day 2020 on using GNU Emacs and org-mode for reproducible research.

The take home message for the talk is that Emacs is a great tool for research, because it makes straightforward to link data, software and analysis together, in a single (or a collection) of living, executable and consistent documents. Furthermore, everything is based on plain text, which makes for great portability and longevity. Lastly, GNU Emacs is free (as in freedom) software, continuously maintained and extended by its community of users since over 35 years. This makes GNU Emacs a powerful and trustworthy tool, that each research can contribute to - very much like the research process itself!

This repo holds two directories:

• presentation: the slides, written in Org.
• org-mode-examples: the examples shown during the presentation.
  • org-intro.org: A simple document illustrating the basics of org-mode, mostly its use as a markup language.
  • RR.org: A larger file illustrating how Org-mode can be used to write consistent executable documents bundling together data, software and analysis, hence greatly enhancing reproducibility of research.

Resources

• org-mode official website: https://orgmode.org/
• org-mode manual (the above mostly focuses on features discussed in Chapter 15: Working with source code)
• worg (the World of Org): A community collection of resources on Org-mode, complementary to the official docs.
• Babel: active code in Org-mode on Worg (the World of Org)
• A great video on writing Consistent Technical Documents Using Emacs and Org Mode (YouTube - 22’).