Organisation

Realising FAIR: Data organisation

In this module, we will discover the FAIR data principles and their main elements as they relate to organisation:

• Understand the importance of good data organisation and be aware of best practices around data organisation

Data Organisation

Good data organisation will allow you to make the data Findable both for yourself and for your collaborators who have access to the data. Implementing a good folder structure, data organisation and a meaningful file naming convention is a simple first step towards making data FAIR.

• It is easier to do data organisation right from the start, which will save you a lot of time!

• There is no one right way to do it, and you may have to adapt to workflows in your lab/team

To organise your files it is good to set up a folder structure and choose a file naming convention.

Hierarchical folder structure

List the types of data in your project and fit them into categories. These can be by file type, time period, collection method, project, or instrument.

• Avoid overlapping categories/names

• Choose meaningful names

• Avoid going to deep in the hierarchy (too many subfolders)

• Don’t let the list of files in a folder grow too big - add a new subfolder

• Consider who needs access to what if you have collaborators

For example: Folder structure explanation of Neuroscientist Nikola Vukovic

Image by Allison Horst

Research Compendium

A research compendium combines all elements of your project, allowing others to reproduce your work. This works particularly well when you work with data and code and have to share these with others.

You can find more information about Research Compendia in The Turing Way.

The Turing Way illustration by Scriberia. CC-BY 4.0. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807

Tagging files

You can also tag files to organise them (see this MIT guide): Tagging files

• Add short keywords to files (files can have more than 1 tag)

• Tagging can be used in combination with the hierarchical folder structure

• Consistency is key (for example, report, Report and reports are three seperate tags instead of one!)

• Tagging might depend on the software you’re using

File naming convention

File names can add information to the file to make them more findable and understandable

• The Turing Way information on File Naming Conventions

• Best practices for file naming for MDPL researchers

Further Resources

• This information is also summarised in a 15 minute video
• Project structure videos by Danielle Navarro (with slides).
• The Turing Way - Data storage and organisation (Community 2022)
• You can also use templates such as Cookiecutter (particularly helpful if you use the same folder directories for different projects or work with a lot of students).

References

Community, The Turing Way. 2022. The Turing Way: A Handbook for Reproducible, Ethical and Collaborative Research. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.3233853.