Cheat Sheet: How to structure data?
Abstract
This handy cheat sheet summarizes best practices in file naming and documentation to help with making your data FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable). Using standardized files names and a consistent documentation does not only help you find, understand and possibly reuse your data after weeks or months, it also help others make sense of your data and thus makes it more likely to be reused and referenced by others.
Full text
2023-11-14_HCN4_HEK293_IV60s_FN-001.csv Cheat Sheet How to structure data? File naming Do: ✓Human and machine readable ✓Content-specific and descriptive ✓Keep naming consistent ✓Date files ✓Pad numbers with leading zeros (_v001) ✓Document your conventions Don’t: ✗No special characters (Spaces, {}[] <>()*%#’;”,?!&@$~.ä) ✗Cryptic names ✗Too long names Artwork by @allison_horst licensed under CC-BY 4.0 Date No spaces Reference to project, experiment, … If needed: Version Based on artwork by fdm.nrw licensed under CC-BY 4.0 Documentation Should include: •Author information and contact points •Project description •Goals •Hypothesis •Definition of acronyms and abbreviations •Information on how the data was created (Methods, Time and Place) •Limitations •Data-specific information •Data structure (file overview) and relation •Taken measures to clean data •Explanation of variables, labels and code •Differences between dataset version •Information on access and reuse (license) •Acknowledgments Structured database or file? Code book / data dictionary Documentation for entire project? Electronic lab notebook Wiki README file Multi-person project? Experimentfocused project? If needed: File owner Alexandra Mielke & Alicia Janz 2025