apatfa

The apatfa package generates a Word (docx) file containing APA Tables, Figures, and Appendix sections.

Installation

You can install the development version of apatfa from GitHub with:

devtools::install_github("toddagood/apatfa")

Example

Please see paper.R and paper.docx in apatfa/inst/iris/.

Details

The apatfa (a-pat-fa) package automates the creation of “Tables”, “Figures”, and “Appendix” sections for scholarly papers written in MS Word using the APA style guide. The name apatfa is an abbreviation for American Psychological Association Tables, Figures, and Appendices. According to APA style, tables and figures can either be placed within the body of the paper or they can be grouped into end sections. The apatfa package takes the approach of always putting tables and figures in end sections (along with the appendices) in order to keep a clear separation between input and output documents in the document workflow. Your manually entered body content is kept in an input docx file and the content generated by R is kept in a separate output docx file. The output docx file is then included (by reference, with auto-refresh) back into the input docx file by using the IncludeText feature of Word.

The main function apa_docx() generates an output docx file containing bookmarked content (tables, figures, and appendices) numbered and organized in APA style sections. Within each output section, the content is ordered by the first bookmark reference to the content from within the input docx file. After the output file is included into the end of the input file using a Word IncludeText field, the bookmarked content in the output docx file will be available for reference from within the input docx file in the usual way (by using the Word > Insert > Cross Reference > Bookmark menu).

This package primarily uses the officer and flextable packages, but the difference here is the obsession with conforming to the APA style guide. For example, in APA style, numeric table columns should be center-aligned and at the same time should be decimal-aligned, which flextables do not support, while apatfa supports that and does it by default.

The apatfa package uses the officer package to read and write docx files, uses the flextable package to style tables, and uses the ggplot2 package to style figures. I really appreciate the work of David Gohel and the other contributors to the officer and flextable packages.

Here are the basic steps for using apatfa to create a paper:

• To get started, download (usually from your company or institution) a Word (docx) file containing a title page template, headers, footers, and pre-defined APA styles for paragraphs and fonts.

• Use Word > Insert > Quick Parts > Field to insert an {IncludeText "output_file.docx"} field right after the ‘References’ section in your paper. Note that apatfa does not attempt to automate generation of the ‘References’ section because there are several good reference management tools available that integrate directly into the Word > References menu.

• Install and load the apatfa package in R:

install.packages("devtools")
install_github("toddagood/apatfa")
library(apatfa)

• Ensure that Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman fonts are installed on your computer (such as in the Windows font registry), that the extrafont R package is installed, and that extrafont::loadfonts() can load those fonts. Confirm that the fonts have been loaded by calling extrafont::fonts() in R.

extrafont::fonts()

• Create a simple ‘R script’ (not ‘R Markdown’ or ‘R Notebook’) containing the following calls:

  • Call get_styles() -> styles to get a customizable styles list.
  • Call set_apa_defaults() to set APA themes as the defaults for flextables and ggplots.
  • Call init_tfas() to initialize/reset the list of table, figure, and appendix content.
  • Call add_styling(styles, df) -> styles to add automatic styling for column names and values in a data frame based on the class of the column (factor, logical, numeric, string) or directly manipulate the styles list to adjust styling as needed.
  • Call tibble(...) %>% flextable() %>% styler(styles) to create an APA styled flextable. Numeric columns will be center-aligned and decimal aligned by default. The styles list will control other styling options. The styling can also be touched-up using flextable functions if needed.
  • Short-cuts are available to create specially formatted analysis result tables. For example: aov(...) %>% as_flextable_aov().
  • Call add_table(x, bookmark, title, styles, notes = NULL, wide = FALSE, ...) to add an APA styled flextable, x, as a bookmarked table with the given title, styles, and notes. If the table is wide, use wide = TRUE to display that table in landscape orientation. There are functions available to assist with preparing the title and notes args. The bookmark string must start with “t” (for table) and be less than 40 characters long.
  • Call add_figure(fig, bookmark, title, styles, ...) to add a ggplot as a bookmarked figure with the given title, styles, and notes. If the figure is wide, use wide = TRUE to display that figure in landscape orientation. The bookmark string must start with “f” (for figure) and be less than 40 characters long.
  • Call add_appendix(bookmark, fun, wide = FALSE) to add a bookmarked appendix. The bookmark string must start with “a” (for appendix) and be less than 40 characters long. The fun function must accept an rdocx object and use commands from the officer package to add appendix content and return the updated rdocx object. Within the fun function, you may find the following helpful:
    • Call add_md() to add normal paragraphs to the appendix with markdown styling support (based on the default paragraph style).
    • Call add_code_file() to add the contents of a source-code file to the appendix (in Courier New, 10pt, single-spaced).
  • Call apa_docx("input_file.docx", "output_file.docx") which will read the bookmark references from the input docx file and generate the output docx file with the referenced tables, figures, and appendices arranged in the right order.
    • As a short-hand notation, calling apa_docx(here = function() {}) from within an R script named paper.R will automatically use paper.docx as the input file and paper.tfa.docx as the output file.
    • A convenient approach is to create an R project per paper and name the input files paper.docx and paper.R and the output file will be paper.tfa.docx, which you will include into paper.docx.
    • If you follow those conventions, then you can also use a relative path name in the IncludeText field as follows: { IncludeText "{ FileName \p }/../paper.tfa.docx" }. Use Ctrl-F9 to insert the outer and inner braces (don’t type them directly since they are special), and type the rest verbatim.

• Once the output file has been generated, open the input docx file, and if the IncludeText field does not auto-update then press Ctrl-A (to select all) once and press F9 (to update all fields) twice.

• Use Word > Insert > Cross Reference to insert or remove references to bookmarks defined in the included file. Regenerate the output docx file after adding, removing, or re-ording bookmark references.

The documentation for the functions can be opened with the command help(package = "apatfa").

To learn more about apatfa, start with the vignettes (coming soon): browseVignettes(package = "apatfa").