Open Science Skills

A library of Claude Code skills for experimental social science, computational text analysis, manuscript QA, and transparent reporting. Install as a plugin to get AI assistance from research design through citation, figure/table, and final submission checks. All 23 skills auto-trigger from prompt context and are also available as explicit /oss:skill-name slash commands (the oss: prefix can be omitted when there is no ambiguity with other installed plugins).

Skills were developed using a curated library of methodology texts. They are iteratively expanded as new sources, ideas, and skills are incorporated. This is a living and breathing kind of repo. Skill building and editing is author-driven with the help of Opus 4.6, Gemini 3.0, and Chat GPT 5.4.

Design follows Anthropic's skill authoring best practices: concise procedural guidance (no textbook definitions), trigger-rich YAML descriptions for auto-invocation, and progressive disclosure (instructions in skills, bibliography in SOURCES.md). Skills are periodically audited against both the Claude Code skills reference and the skill authoring guide to keep descriptions, frontmatter, and substantive content current.

These skills are meant to support, not supplant, the research and writing process. They adhere to APSA, JARS, DA-RT, TOP, and FAIR open-science expectations. All guidance is grounded in 160+ published sources and documented workflow patterns — see SOURCES.md for the full bibliography.

Skill Map

flowchart LR
    A[Research Design] --> B[Analysis]
    A --> C[Writing and PAP]
    B --> D[Methods Reporting]
    C --> D
    D --> E[Manuscript QA and FAIR]
    E --> F[Review and Submission]

    A -.-> A1[conjoint / survey / list / cross-national]
    B -.-> B1[topic modeling / text classification / OCR]
    C -.-> C1[hypotheses / literature review / narrative / preregistration]
    D -.-> D1[figures / tables / methods reporting]
    E -.-> E1[FAIR / citations / figure-table-audit / archive checks]
    F -.-> F1[paper-review-lite / presubmit / journal-review]

Use the domain skills when designing or analyzing a study. Use the manuscript-QA skills when a draft exists and you need to check whether FAIR availability, citations, figures, tables, reporting, and replication materials can survive review.

How Skills Work

Each skill is available in two ways:

Both modes are available when installed as a plugin. Individual skills can also be installed manually (auto-trigger only).

Installation

Option 1 — Plugin (recommended, installs all skills + slash commands)

Permanent install (user-wide, persists across all projects):

# Step 1: Register the marketplace (one-time)
claude plugin marketplace add scdenney/open-science-skills

# Step 2: Install the plugin
claude plugin install oss@open-science-skills

# Project-only install
claude plugin install oss@open-science-skills --scope project

The plugin's slash-command prefix is oss: (short for open science skills). The marketplace and GitHub repo are still named open-science-skills.

Session-only (no install required, active for the current session):

git clone https://github.com/scdenney/open-science-skills.git
cd open-science-skills && claude --plugin-dir ./plugin

All 23 skills auto-trigger based on your prompts. All 23 slash commands (/oss:conjoint-design, /oss:fair-check, /oss:figures, /oss:tables, /oss:figure-table-audit, etc.) are immediately available. The prefix can be omitted when there is no ambiguity with other installed plugins.

Option 2 — Selective install (choose specific skills, auto-trigger only)

Use the interactive install script to pick only the skills you want:

git clone https://github.com/scdenney/open-science-skills.git
cd open-science-skills
bash plugin/scripts/install.sh

The script lists available skills and lets you choose interactively. Skills are installed to ./.claude/skills/ by default (current project only). Options:

# Install to user-wide skills directory (all projects)
bash plugin/scripts/install.sh --target ~/.claude/skills

# Install specific skills non-interactively
bash plugin/scripts/install.sh --skill conjoint-design survey-design list-experiment

# Install all skills
bash plugin/scripts/install.sh --all --target ~/.claude/skills

Restart Claude Code after installing to load the new skills.

Option 3 — Manual copy (single skill, auto-trigger only)

git clone https://github.com/scdenney/open-science-skills.git

# Project-level (current project only)
mkdir -p your-project/.claude/skills/conjoint-design
cp open-science-skills/plugin/skills/conjoint-design/SKILL.md \
   your-project/.claude/skills/conjoint-design/SKILL.md

# User-wide (all projects)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/list-experiment
cp open-science-skills/plugin/skills/list-experiment/SKILL.md \
   ~/.claude/skills/list-experiment/SKILL.md

Note: Manual install gives you auto-trigger only. Slash commands (/skill-name) require the plugin.

Skills

Research Design

Analysis

Corpus Processing

Writing & Reporting

Figures & Tables

Manuscript QA

Review & Submission

Contributing

PRs welcome. To add a new skill:

1. Create plugin/skills/<name>/SKILL.md following the skill authoring best practices
2. Add plugin/commands/<name>.md (see existing examples — one paragraph activation prompt + $ARGUMENTS)
3. Add sources to SOURCES.md under a new or existing section
4. Update badges and table in this README
5. Run bash plugin/scripts/check.sh before opening a PR

License

This project is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. The skills are intended for noncommercial scholarly and educational use.

The citation-check, literature-review, figures, tables, and figure-table-audit skills remix workflow ideas from Cheng-I Wu's Academic Research Skills for Claude Code, also licensed CC BY-NC 4.0. The instructions here are rewritten for this repository's open-science and experimental-social-science scope.