FXMATE Documentation
1 General
1.1 What is FXMATE?
FXMATE (pronounced “effects mate”) is a modern app for analyzing biotests in the context of environmental risk assessment. It is built on the MATE principle (MAde Totally Easy). The user is progressively lead through the application. With appropriately suggested models/tests and easy interpretation boxes, FXMATE ensures guardrails for non-statisticians while still offering access to the full repertory of methods. The primary goal of FXMATE is to be easy to use, guideline-conform, statistically correct and reproducible. Among others, this is achieved with R, Shiny and Docker.
1.2 Design principles
The design of the app consists of four major components:
- Sidebar
The sidebar is the component where all user inputs are located. From file upload, to selection, sliders or text input. It is the only place in the user interface (UI) that controls the output of the analyses and methodological choices.
- Main Panel
The main panel mainly displays relevant information and results to the user. Only occasionally checkbox inputs to confirm or buttons to download results are located in the main panel.
- Primary Navigation Bar
The primary navigation bar is used to navigate through the main modules of the app. These are Data, Model, Other ECX, Statistics and Report. They progressively appear if requirements of the proceeding modules are met (and they are selected). In certain events (e.g., when a new data set is loaded) these panels also disappear to start the analysis anew.
- Secondary Navigation Bar
The secondary navigation bar is used to navigate the subsections of each main section. Just like the primary navigation bar the panels appear progressively. The secondary navigation bar also holds the “Proceed” button to continue to the next main section.
1.3 Requirements
FXMATE has been tested on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. Since FXMATE is built on the widely used Bootstrap 5 framework, also other browsers are expected to be compatible. The app runs on a server-side Docker image. This has the benefit of giving the same results no matter on which device the app is run but also that nearly no hardware requirements are necessary. However, it is strongly recommended to use a screen resolution of at least 800x1400px. Since FXMATE runs in your browser you can use all available accessibility features (e.g., using zoom to increase/decrease the size of the UI).
1.4 Changelog
Changelog of major and minor updates:
v0.4.0 (2026-03-20)
| Change | Description |
|---|---|
| New guidelines | OECD 2013 & 214 now available |
| New templates | Templates were reworked for easier use and to accommodate additional endpoints. OECD211 now features length, weight and days to first brood as response. |
| Strict monotonicity | New method available to assess monotonicity for continuous data |
| Improved efficiency | Solved issue that triggered unnecessary model (re)runs |
| Input list in report | Users can now include a list of all input choices in the report |
| Bug fixes & minor improvements | Fixed minor bugs in the app and in used R packages; added response variable to navigation bar |
v0.3.0 (2025-12-18)
| Change | Description |
|---|---|
| New count tests | Dunnet GLM, CPCAT |
| New quantal test | CPFISH |
| Tarone test | Messages and errors for this test are now printed |
v0.2.0 (2025-07-22)
| Change | Description |
|---|---|
| Example data sets | These example data sets make it easier to get started with the app and can also be used for validation purposes |
| Data summaries | Response-type specific data summaries offer more profound insights in “data check” |
| Equidispersion | Model advice alerts you to non-equidispersed Poisson data |
| Tarone | Tarone test now automatically applied to all quantal datasets |