Skip to contents

instarreport: an R implementation of the INSTAR framework

Source: R/instarreport-package.R
instarreport-package.Rd

instarreport is the R implementation of INSTAR (INvertebrate Standards for Treatment And Reporting; White et al., in prep), an 18-item reporting standard for invertebrate welfare in research. The package produces a standardised, publication-ready summary figure in which each cell carries the substantive content for the corresponding item (species and provenance, housing conditions, ethics review and permits, and so on), in the same spirit as the PRISMA and ROSES flow diagrams for evidence synthesis.

Three ways to fill out the framework

Interactive prompt (see instar_fill()):

items <- instar_fill(save_to = "my_study.csv")

CSV template (see write_template(), read_items()):

write_template("my_study.csv")
# ...edit the value column in Excel...
items <- read_items("my_study.csv")

Programmatic:

items <- instar_template()
items$value[items$item_id == "subjects_taxon"] <-
  "Bombus terrestris (worker female); morphology + COI"

Building the figure

report <- instar_report(
  paper = list(title = "My study", authors = "Smith et al. (2026)"),
  items = items
)
save_figure(report, "fig_S1_welfare_reporting.pdf")

Auditing many studies

corpus <- read_instar("supplements/")
audit  <- instar_audit(corpus)
summary(audit, by = "journal")

Web tool

instar_app() launches a local web interface for filling out the framework with a live preview.

See also

Useful links:

Author

Maintainer: Thomas E. White thomas.white@sydney.edu.au (ORCID)

Authors: