Scan Tech Studio (STS)

There’s no one way to organize your data, but a consistent and descriptive file structure can save you time and money later. Use a system that makes sense to you so that keeping things in order becomes a habit instead of a chore.

Why bother?

• Save money. Well-organized, easy-to-find files make a big impact on the efficiency of your research. This is especially important if you are sharing active data with collaborators.
• Increase your impact. In the long run, well-managed data are more discoverable, accessible, and reusable (including by your future self!). This will help increase the visibility and impact of your work.
• Demonstrate integrity. Discoverable, accessible, and reusable data are fundamental to ensuring reproducible or replicable research.
• It’s required. Most funding agencies now require a data management plan for grant proposals. Publishers increasingly insist on data sharing as a condition of publishing your work. Organized, reusable data help demonstrate compliance.

File Formats

Choosing file formats carefully helps avoid obsolescence. Use formats that are:

• Non-proprietary, open, documented standards (e.g., .tif, .txt, .csv, .pdf)
• Encoded with standard characters (e.g., ASCII, UTF-8)
• Used commonly in your research community
• Unencrypted
• Uncompressed

Examples of open formats

• Containers: TAR, GZIP, ZIP
• Databases: XML, CSV
• Geospatial: SHP, DBF, GeoTIFF, NetCDF
• Moving images: MOV, MPEG, AVI, MXF, WMV
• Sounds: WAVE, AIFF, MP3, MXF
• Statistics: ASCII, DTA, POR, SAS, SAV
• Still images: TIFF, JPEG 2000, PDF, PNG, GIF, BMP
• Tabular data: CSV
• Text: XML, PDF/A, HTML, ASCII, UTF-8
• Web archive: WARC

For more information on recommended file formats, go here: Recommended Formats Statement

File Naming

Adopt a naming convention and use it throughout a project (or throughout your career). Consider including a README.txt file that explains your naming convention and any codes or abbreviations you use. File names should:

• Describe the contents of the file, but not be overly long. Avoid generic names (like draft.doc; final2.xls) that can be hard to decipher and easily overwritten.
• Include dates. Don’t rely on system dates, which can be misleading. Recommended formats look like: YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD.
• Reserve 3-letter file extensions for application-specific codes (e.g., .jpg, .mov, .tif).
• Not contain special characters like "/ \ : * ? " < > [ ] & $. These have meaning in software and operating systems and can cause trouble.
• Not contain spaces. These are problematic for some operating systems. Use underscores (file_name), dashes (file-name), or camel case (FileName) instead.
• Be consistent.

Example Project_instrument_location_date_time_version.ext