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There are countless ways to lose data: a file is accidentally deleted, a computer is stolen, the context of the data is unclear, software becomes obsolete. How do you keep your data findable and useable?
File formats
A file format is the way in which the information in a digital file is coded.
To keep research data useable, it is important to save them in a durable
format.
Good organisation of your files allows you to find your data easily later on.
It also prevents confusion when working with several file versions, and it is
easier to see which data are (still) missing or of which file more copies were
saved unnecessarily.
In order to keep your research data useable for yourself and others, it is
wise to describe your data: set down all the information necessary to understand
the contents and context of the data.
Simply put, metadata are data on data: they are the characteristic or
identifying features of a file. As soon as you are going to publish or archive
your data, you will be asked to provide the metadata.
If research data are lost or rendered useless, it may be extremely costly or
even impossible to reacquire the data. Therefore it is recommended to store data
properly and to make back-ups.
There are limits to the storing of data: there is not enough money and space to keep everything. On what grounds do you decide which data should be saved? And what does data destruction involve?
At the conclusion of your research project, you are obliged to save the raw research data for at least five years and to make them available to other researchers upon request. You can do this yourself, but you can also choose to store your data in a data repository.
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