BioVisReport: A Markdown-based lightweight website builder for reproducible and interactive visualization of results from peer-reviewed publications

Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2022 Jun 8:20:3133-3139. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2022.06.009. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Interactive visualization is an effective way to promote the reproducibility of results presented in biomedical publications and to facilitate additional exploration of the reported data. However, there is a lack of convenient tools that balance reproducibility with ease of use. To address this problem, we develop BioVisReport, a lightweight solution for the rapid generation of an interactive website based on a user-defined Markdown file, which acts as a text markup language without requiring users to master complex syntax and allows them to preview the results in real-time. Interactive websites generated by the tool can help readers conveniently reproduce research findings and perform further in-depth analyses beyond those reported in the original peer-reviewed publications. Currently, BioVisReport offers 17 basic types of plots for visualizing published data. In addition, the extensibility of BioVisReport supports flexible integration of user-developed Python plugins with multiple programming languages. BioVisReport is freely available at https://biovis.report/.

Keywords: Interactive visualization; Peer-reviewed publications; Reproducibility; Website builder.