7. Wrap-up

By following this process, you can construct your replication documentation incrementally throughout the course of your work on the project. By the time you have completed your final research project, your replication documentation should also be nearly complete.

Finishing your Readme file

By this point, you should already have recorded notes explaining any modifications you made to the original data files, when you made importable versions of them.

To finish your Readme file, you should add:

1. An overview of all the files included in the replication documentation
2. The structure of the folders in which they are stored
3. Step-by-step instructions for using the replication documentation to replicate the study.

Proofreading and testing your Command files

In the course of your project, you constructed command files that processed your data, produced the descriptive statistics and figures for your data appendix, and executed the analyses and procedures that generated the results you reported in your research project.

Before you consider your command files to be complete and ready to store in your final replication documentation, you should edit them for accuracy and clarity and test them to be sure they reproduce the results of your project, as intended.

Editing your Command files

Edit all your command files to be sure they are accurate and concise:

1. Remove any commands that turned out not to be necessary for your project
2. If you realise that the code you wrote to execute any of the procedures could be rewritten in a simpler or more streamlined way, then revise the code accordingly
3. Ensure the comments in your command files are extensive and clear enough to allow others to understand what is accomplished in each step of data processing and analysis.

Testing your Command files

Test your command files to ensure that they all run without error and that they successfully reproduce the results you reported in your research project.

1. Try following the instructions for replicating your project that you wrote in the Readme file to ensure all your command files run without a problem and produce the intended output
2. If you encounter any errors or crashes, diagnose and fix the problem, and then start the test over.

Make a final check of all your replication documentation

Before you consider your replication documentation to be complete and final, check that it satisfies all the requirements.

Check that:

1. All the required files are included in your replication documentation
2. They are stored in the correct folders
3. The content and format of every file meets the specifications
4. Finally, delete any unnecessary files. Your replication documentation should contain only the files specified, or that you intentionally chose to include for a particular purpose.

After you check that your replication documentation contains everything that it should, and that it does not contain anything unnecessary, it is completed.