Kooplex, building a collaborative platform for users from amateurs to experts

As the number of projects managed by many scientists of different fields and the need for compact educational systems is ever growing, it is becoming essential that universities and research communities develop integrated systems that are well-suited for such complex and demanding tasks.

In this presentation we will focus on the specifics of creating a Docker container-based environment that integrates Jupyter notebooks with version control and data sharing solutions, and makes the cooperation of many users with different scientific backgrounds not only possible, but straightforward and even enjoyable. Researchers can now forget the tedious work of digging through thousands of e-mails to find a single figure and can analyze their own data in a way designed to their specific needs and computational knowledge. The system lets users work on the same datasets without the need of downloading, and version control keeps contributions organized. Digested outputs in the form of static HTML files and interactive dashboards are generated for sharing results with the wider public.

Our system was inspired by the needs of the Compare Europe project to manage disease outbreaks worldwide, but is suitable for any generic large-scale collaboration due to its flexibility.

Two very specific and also very different examples of how such a system can be used to collaborate in the fields ranging from Physics through Bioinformatics to Medicine will also be discussed. We will demonstrate how to set up simple, but effective analysis pipelines with the use of dashboards that allow researchers with no coding experience to manipulate and explore data.