This guide explains how to publish your question groups as reusable templates that can be shared with your organization or the global CheckTick community.

Note: For an overview of question groups and their features, see Question Groups. To browse and import templates, see Question Group Template Library.

Publication Levels

Organization Templates

Publish templates visible only to your organization members:

  • Share validated questionnaires within your team
  • Maintain consistent data collection across projects
  • Available immediately after publishing

Global Templates

Publish templates visible to all Checktick users:

  • Contribute validated instruments to the community
  • Increase visibility and citations of your work
  • Available immediately after publishing

Note: Organization VIEWER role cannot publish templates (view-only access).

Publishing a Question Group

  1. Go to your survey's question groups page
  2. Click Publish next to any question group
  3. Choose publication level (Organization or Global)
  4. Add attribution information:
  5. Author names and ORCID IDs (optional)
  6. Publication title and journal
  7. DOI and PubMed ID (if applicable)
  8. Copyright and license information
  9. Add tags for discoverability
  10. Preview the markdown representation
  11. Confirm publication

Rate limit: 10 publications per day per user

Browsing Templates

Access the template library from:

  • Survey question groups page: Browse & Import Templates button
  • Text Entry page: Link in the information banner

Filter templates by:

  • Publication level (Organization/Global)
  • Tags (categories)
  • Search by name or description

Importing Templates

  1. Browse the template library
  2. Click on a template to view details
  3. Review the markdown and attribution
  4. Click Import into Survey
  5. Select which survey to import into
  6. The question group is added to your survey
  7. Customize as needed in the question builder

Rate limit: 50 imports per hour per user

Note: Imported question groups are independent copies. Changes to your copy don't affect the original template or other imports.

Managing Your Published Templates

View your published templates in the template library filtered by your organization or username (coming soon).

To update a template: - Make changes to your original question group - Publish again with the same slug (existing template is updated)

To delete a template: - Access the template detail page - Click Delete Template - Confirm deletion

Note: Deleting a template doesn't affect question groups that were imported from it.

When publishing templates containing copyrighted or validated instruments:

Required Information

  • Complete author list with affiliations
  • Full publication citation (journal, year, DOI, PMID)
  • Copyright notice
  • License or permissions

Best Practices

  • Only publish instruments you have rights to distribute
  • Prefer public domain or openly licensed instruments
  • Include all required copyright attributions
  • Link to original sources via DOI/PMID
  • Use ORCID IDs to properly credit authors

Public Domain and Open Instruments

Many validated questionnaires are in the public domain or have open licenses:

  • Instruments developed with government funding (e.g., NIMH)
  • Explicitly open-licensed scales
  • Historical instruments where copyright has expired

Always verify the copyright status before publishing.

Global Template Repository

Curated global templates are maintained in the project repository at docs/question-group-templates/. These templates are:

  • Validated instruments with published psychometric properties
  • Properly licensed for distribution
  • Automatically synced to all Checktick deployments
  • Version controlled via Git

See the Global Templates Appendix for the complete list of available templates.

Contributing Global Templates

Community members can contribute validated instruments:

Via GitHub Issue: 1. Create an issue: "New Global Template: [Name]" 2. Provide complete markdown with YAML frontmatter 3. Include validation evidence and copyright status 4. Tag with template-request

Via Pull Request: 1. Add template file to docs/question-group-templates/ 2. Include complete YAML frontmatter with attribution 3. Test with sync_global_question_group_templates --dry-run 4. Submit PR with questionnaire description

All contributions must meet quality standards for validated instruments. See the templates index for the file format and requirements.

Technical Details

Markdown Format

Templates are stored as text using the Text Entry format:

# Question Group Name {group-id}

## Question text {question-id}
(question type)
- Option 1
- Option 2

See Text Entry Documentation for complete syntax.

Template Metadata

Global templates include YAML frontmatter with: - Title, slug, description - Complete attribution (authors, DOI, PMID, etc.) - Tags for categorization - Copyright and license information

Syncing Global Templates

Administrators can sync templates from the repository:

python manage.py sync_global_question_group_templates

This should run on deployment to ensure all instances have the latest templates.