SCpubr: a user-friendly R-package for generating publication-ready visualizations of single-cell transcriptome analyses
Abstract Motivation Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) is now a core technology for resolving cellular heterogeneity in complex samples, and standard analysis workflows produce a wide range of outputs, each requiring tailored visualization. To support this, a wide range of analysis tools have been developed, many of which offer built-in visualizations but leave further customization to the user. Researchers who run standard single-cell workflows in R, often experimental biologists with a working knowledge of Seurat and ggplot2, still spend considerable effort converting analytical outputs into figures that meet journal standards. Results We present SCpubr, an R package that provides concise function calls for generating high-quality, publication-ready visualizations commonly used in single-cell transcriptome analyses. Availability and implementation SCpubr is available on CRAN (https://cran.r-project.org/package=SCpubr), with source code accessible on GitHub (https://github.com/enblacar/SCpubr). Supplementary information Supplementary figures are available at Bioinformatics Advances online. Extensive documentation and tutorials are available via the GitHub Pages site (https://enblacar.github.io/SCpubr-book/). The complete analysis code used to generate all figures in this publication, along with the full R session information and instructions for obtaining the raw input data, is available in GitHub (https://github.com/enblacar/SCpubr-manuscript).
Authors
- Enrique Blanco-Carmona (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1208-1691)
- Marcel Kool
Institutions
- German Cancer Research Center (DE)
- Utrecht University (NL)
- Heidelberg University (DE)
- University Medical Center Utrecht (NL)
- Hopp Children's Cancer Center Heidelberg (DE)
- Princess Máxima Center (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Bioinformatics Advances
- Published
- 2026-05-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbag151
- Primary Topic
- Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00