Skip to Main Content

Manage & Share Research Data

Tips & tools to help student researchers manage research data & information with less stress

Tips for organizing

  1. Have a plan for naming and organizing your files. This is usually called a file naming convention.
    • You do not have to reinvent the wheel. You can use best practices - see the box below.

  2. If you are working with others, discuss a pattern (file naming convention) that will work for everyone on the project.

  3. Describe your pattern in a text file that you save in the top-level project folder. Write it so that someone else (you in 6 months, your faculty advisor, supervisor, or team members) can understand the pattern and find things easily. 

  4. Use the pattern and be consistent. 

    • But if the pattern isn't working, you can change it. Tools like Bulk Rename Utility make it easy to change many file names at once.

Good practices for naming files

What's in a file name?

Include key pieces of information about the project, what is in the file, when it was created or modified, or who created it. Common elements of useful file naming conventions include:

  • Project/grant name and/or number
  • Date of creation/modification
  • Name of creator/investigator: last name first followed by (initials of) first name
  • Research team/department associated with the data
  • Content or subject descriptor
  • Data collection method (instrument, site, etc.)
  • Version number
  • Project phase

 

file naming convention from Scottish Futures Trust

Source: https://bimportal.scottishfuturestrust.org.uk/level1/stage/8/task/47

diagram of file naming convention elements

 

More Tips

  • Be Clear, Concise, Consistent, Correct, and Conformant
    • Ask your advisor if there are standards you should be following.
  • Make it meaningful (to you and anyone else who is working on the project)
    • Provide context
    • Still unique and comprehensible if moved to another location.
  • For sequential numbering, use leading zeros.
    • A sequence of 1-10 should be numbered 01-10
    • A sequence of 1-100 should be numbered 001-010-100
  • No special characters: & , * % # ; * ( ) ! @$ ^ ~ ' { } [ ] ? < > -
  • For dates, use a standard format like ISO-8601: YYYY-MM-DD (ex: 2015-02-09)
  • Put dates at the beginning or the end of your files, not in the middle
  • File names should contain only one period before the file extension
    • name_paper.doc NOT name.paper.doc OR name_paper..doc

Tools for organizing