PaperTrail

PaperTrail is a web app (with a lightweight desktop uploader) that helps researchers publish “audit-ready” figures and tables with traceable provenance. It watches a project folder or connects to GitHub/OSF, then packages the exact data files, code snippets, environment metadata, and transformation steps that produced each figure. Instead of asking labs to fully containerize everything (which many won’t do), it focuses on the 80/20: per-figure evidence bundles, checksums, and a clean, shareable link that journals, reviewers, and collaborators can inspect. It generates a human-readable “figure recipe” plus a machine-readable manifest, and can export to Zenodo/OSF with a DOI. This is not a magic reproducibility button; it reduces the friction and ambiguity around what produced what, making open science practices easier to comply with under real lab time constraints.