Data Management

Following a consistent standard is crucial in maintaining organized, documented, and findable data.  It is suggested that you develop a naming convention and consistently apply it to all your files for a given project.

Adopting a file naming convention can be a key part of keeping your project data organized. A good filename should 

• refrain from including spaces, opting for dashes or underscores instead
• concise describe the dataset
• contain a date or timestamp
• include versioning to aid in tracking changes 

Choosing an appropriate file format is also important. Resources below provide some examples, and keep in mind that repositories may be selective in the types of format that they will accept.