Once you create, gather, or start manipulating data and files, they can quickly become disorganised. To save time and prevent errors later on, you and your colleagues should decide how you will name and structure files and folders. Including documentation (or 'metadata') will allow you to add context to your data so that you and others can understand it in the short, medium, and long-term. Show
Below you can find some guidance on:
Naming and Organising filesChoosing a logical and consistent way to name and organise your files allows you and others to easily locate and use them. Ideally, the best time to think how to name and structure the documents and directories you create is at the start of a project. Agreeing on a naming convention will help to provide consistency, which will make it easier to find and correctly identify your files, prevent version control problems when working on files collaboratively. Organising your files carefully will save you time and frustration by helping you and your colleagues find what you need when you need it. How should I organise my files?Whether you are working on a stand alone computer, or on a networked drive, the need to establish a system that allows you to access your files, avoid duplication, and ensure that your data can be backed up, takes a little planning. A good place to start is to develop a logical folder structure. The following tips should help you develop such a system:
What do I need to consider when creating a file name?Decide on a file naming convention at the start of your project. Useful file names are:
It is useful if your department/project agrees on the following elements of a file name:
How should I name my files, so that I know which document is the most recent version?Very few documents are drafted by one person in one sitting. More often there will be several people involved in the process and it will occur over an extended period of time. Without proper controls this can quickly lead to confusion as to which version is the most recent. Here is a suggestion of one way to avoid this:
There are also numerous external resources that will offer you guidance on the best file naming conventions and you can find more information about them here. Documentation and MetadataTo ensure that you understand your own data and that others may find, use and properly cite your data, it helps to add documentation and metadata (data about data) to the documents and datasets you create. What are 'documentation' and 'metadata'?The term 'documentation' encompasses all the information necessary to interpret, understand and use a given dataset or set of documents. On this website, we use 'documentation' and 'metadata' (data about data - usually embedded in the data files/documents themselves) interchangeably. When and how do I include documentation/metadata?It is a good practice to begin to document your data at the very beginning of your research project and continue to add information as the project progresses. Include procedures for documentation in your data planning. There are a number of ways you can add documentation to your data: Embedded documentation Information about a file or dataset can be included within the data or document itself. For digital datasets, this means that the documentation can sit in separate files (for example text files) or be integrated into the data file(s), as a header or at specified locations in the file. Examples of embedded documentation include:
Supporting documentation; This is information in separate files that accompanies data in order to provide context, explanation, or instructions on confidentiality and data use or reuse. Examples of supporting documentation include:
Supporting documentation should be structured, so that it can be used to identify and locate the data via a web browser or web based catalogue. Catalogue metadata is usually structured according to an international standard and associated with the data by repositories or data centres when materials are deposited. Examples of catalogue data are:
Digital Curation Centre provides examples of disciplinary-specific metadata, which can be viewed here. Tools for metadata tracking and data standardsISA Tools - metadata tracking tools for life sciences The open source ISA metadata tracking tools help to manage an increasingly diverse set of life science, environmental and biomedical experiments that employing one or a combination of technologies. Built around the ‘Investigation’ (the project context), ‘Study’ (a unit of research) and ‘Assay’ (analytical measurement) general-purpose Tabular format, the ISA tools helps you to provide rich description of the experimental metadata (i.e. sample characteristics, technology and measurement types, sample-to-data relationships) so that the resulting data and discoveries are reproducible and reusable. FAIRsharing - searchable portal of inter-related data standards, databases, and policies for life sciences FAIRsharing is a curated, searchable portal of inter-related data standards, databases, and policies in the life, environmental, and biomedical sciences. Managing ReferencesProjects can last for months or years, and it is easy to lose track of which piece of information came from which source. It can be a challenge to have to reconstruct half of your citations in the scramble at the end of the project! Your future self may not remember everything that seems obvious in the present, so it is important to take clear notes about your sources. What is 'reference management software'?Reference management software helps you keep track of your citations as you work, and partially automates the process of constructing bibliographies when it is time to publish. The University of Cambridge also offers support and training on several referencing systems. Who can help me with reference conventions and formats for my academic discipline or particular project?Your departmental librarian will be able to help you pick the right format for references and will probably
know about some useful search and management tools that you have not used before. Feel free to ask him/her for advice. Organising e-mailMost people now routinely send and receive lots of messages every day and as a result, their inbox can get very quickly overloaded with hundreds of personal and work-related email. Setting aside some time to organise your emails will ensure information can be found quickly and easily, and is stored securely. Why should I organise my email?Apart from the obvious frustration and time wasted looking for that email you remember sending to someone last month, email is increasingly used to store important documents and data, often with information related to the attachments within the email itself. Without the proper controls in place they can often be deleted by mistake. It is also important to remember that your work email comes under The Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000, so your emails are potentially open to scrutiny. What are the first steps to organising my email?If your emails have got out of control there are a number of immediate steps you can take to control the problem:
How can I ensure my emails remain organised?Here are some general tips to ensure your email remains organised in the long term:
What is useful when you want to organize and summarize your data in a report?Which of the following is useful when you want to organize and summarize you data? To organize controls vertically on a form, use a tabular layout.
Which of the following is used to store data records?Computer databases typically store aggregations of data records or files that contain information, such as sales transactions, customer data, financials and product information. Databases are used for storing, maintaining and accessing any sort of data.
Which of the following is used to find data in a database?Queries. Queries can perform many different functions in a database. Their most common function is to retrieve specific data from the tables.
Which of the following views divides a report into the following three sections Page Header The detail in the page footer?Design view Design view gives you a more detailed view of the structure of the form. You can see the Header, Detail, and Footer sections for the form.
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