File Names & Folder Organization
File-naming Conventions
- Use a consistent file-naming convention and document it
- Provide enough information to uniquely identify a file
- Avoid spaces in filenames
- Not all software applications can use such names
- Instead use capital letters or underscores to connect multiple words
- Avoid the following special characters in filenames: & , * % # ; * : ( ) ! @$ ^ ~ ' { } [ ] ? < > - + /
- For dates, use the format YYYYMMDD
- With this date format, sorting alphabetically also sorts chronologically
- Keep track of different file versions by using a suffix to represent the version number
- Example: ProjectName_Instrument_Condition_YYYYMMD_v01.txt
Folder Organization
- Follow a consistent folder system for storing data
- Ideally, one that makes sense to someone without deep knowledge of the research project
- Example: Instrument → Date → Sample
- Example: Grant Number → Location → AnalysisType
- Do not rely on the folder structure to provide critical context for files
- Files copied elsewhere will lose this information
- Put critical information in the file name
- Example: use Project01/SiteB/SiteB_2016_rawdata.txt instead of Project01/SiteB/2016/rawdata.txt.