Organizing & Describing Your Data

Ryan Clement | Fall 2015

What we'll cover

Why data management is important
File naming conventions
Organization

Why

Manage Data?

Look Familiar?

What is research data?

University of Edinburgh
MANTRA Research Data Management Training,
‘Research Data Explained’

Unlike other types of information, research data are collected, observed, or created, for the purposes of analysis to produce and validate original research results.”

Why manage data?

The Researcher Perspective

Manage your data for yourself to:

Keep yourself organized
Track your research processes for reproducibility
Better control versions of data
Quality control your data more efficiently

Why manage data?

The Researcher Perspective

Manage your data for yourself to:

Make backups to avoid data loss
Be prepared: Document your data for your own recollection, accountability & re-use (by yourself or others)
Format your data for re-use (by yourself or others)
Prepare it to share it – gain credibility & recognition for your science efforts!

Organizing & Describing

File Naming

File Naming Best Practices

BE CONSISTENT
Have conventions for naming:

Directory structure
Folder names
File names

Always include the same information
- (e.g. date and time)
Retain the order of information
- (e.g. YYYYMMDD, not MMDDYYY )

File Naming Best Practices

BE DESCRIPTIVE

Try to keep file and folder names under 32 characters

Within reason, Include relevant information such as:

Unique identifier (ie. Project Name or Grant # in folder name)
Project or research data name
Conditions (Lab instrument, Solvent, Temperature, etc.)
Run of experiment (sequential)
Date (in file properties too)
When using sequential numbering, make sure to use leading zeros to allow for multi-digit versions. For example, a sequence of 1-10 should be numbered 01-10; a sequence of 1-100 should be numbered 001-010-100.
No special characters: & , * % # ; * ( ) ! @$ ^ ~ ' { } [ ] ? < > - + /
Use only one period and before the file extension
- (e.g. name_paper.doc NOT name.paper.doc OR name_paper..doc)