This is ‘Love Your Data‘ week, and each day we’ll be sharing a post about one or more fundamental data management practices that you can use. Part 2 of 5. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
GOOD PRACTICE
Have a plan for organizing your data. This usually includes a folder structure and file naming scheme (plan), and version control to keep track of file changes. Make these a part of your research process and they will become good habits. Check out the tips below!
You want to avoid this problem:
Source: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1323
– want to see more? Google “bad file names” and browse through the images for laughs
TODAY’S ACTIVITY
File Naming: If you don’t already have a file naming plan and folder structure, come up with one and share it. See our list of good practices for naming files also summarized here:
- Be Clear, Concise, Consistent, and Correct
- Make it meaningful (to you and anyone else who is working on the project)
- Provide context so it will still be a unique file and people will be able to recognize what it is if moved to another location.
- For sequential numbering, use leading zeros.
- For example, a sequence of 1-10 should be numbered 01-10; a sequence of 1-100 should be numbered 001-010-100.
- Do not use special characters: & , * % # ; * ( ) ! @$ ^ ~ ‘ { } [ ] ? < >
- Some people like to use a dash ( – ) to separate words
- Others like to separate words by capitalizing the first letter of each (e.g., DST_FileNamingScheme_20151216)
- Dates should be formatted like this: YYYYMMDD (e.g., 20150209)
- Put dates at the beginning or the end of your files, not in the middle, to make it easy to sort files by name
- OK: DST_FileNamingScheme_20151216
- OK: 20151216_DST_FileNamingScheme
- AVOID: DST_20151216_FileNamingScheme
- Put dates at the beginning or the end of your files, not in the middle, to make it easy to sort files by name
- Use only one period and before the file extension (e.g., name_paper.doc NOT name.paper.doc OR name_paper..doc)
File Version Control: Keeping track of versions of files, or file history, can be challenging but may save you a lot of time if you want to go back to an earlier version of a file. There are different ways to approach this issue:
- Manually (low tech/no tech approach): Use a sequential numbered system: v01, v02
- Don’t use confusing labels, such as ‘revision’, ‘final’, ‘final2’, etc.
- Use version control software
- If you use a cloud storage system, such as Spideroak, versioning might be built in/automatic
- Git + Github may provide what you need but may also have a steep learning curve (but there are lots of educational resources, such as this and this, and there are also some GUI interfaces for Git if you’re not used to command-line work), There are other systems too, such as Mercurial, or TortoiseSVN.
Folder Structure: Consider the hierarchy for how you want to organize your files, whether to use a deep or a shallow organization for them.
Here’s an example from the UK Data Archive :
Example of folder structure from UK Data Archive.
Tell Us
How do you name your files? Do you have a system? Is it written down?
Would you change anything about it now, if you could?
What tools do you use to keep your files organized?
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Resources
See the guidelines on the UO Research Data Management pages
Contact us if you have questions.
Check out the resource board & the changing face of data on Pinterest
Source: materials adapted from LYD website.
