Data

Data should be managed and shared properly to make it useful in research, to promote transparency and facilitate reproducibility, and to ensure the credibility of research. This includes such practices as transforming data into a tidy format, storing data in open file formats, and providing data documentation. emLab data—unless restricted—belong in shared locations.

The pages below cover the conventions and tools we use for working with data:

• Data File Naming — naming conventions for data files so they’re consistent and easy to navigate.
• Metadata — what to document about each dataset and how to record it.
• Accessing emLab data in R — how to read data from the emLab directories, locally or on a GRIT server.
• Tidy Data — principles for cleaning and shaping raw data into an analysis-ready form.
• Data Formats — preferred open formats for storing and archiving data.
• Data Use Agreements and Confidential Data — handling restricted data and the process for setting up DUAs and NDAs.

Recommended readings

• Borer, Elizabeth T., Eric W. Seabloom, Matthew B. Jones, and Mark Schildhauer. 2009. “Some Simple Guidelines for Effective Data Management.” The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 90 (2): 205–14. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9623-90.2.205.

• Broman, Karl W., and Kara H. Woo. 2018. “Data Organization in Spreadsheets.” The American Statistician 72 (1): 2–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.2017.1375989.

• Ellis, Shannon E., and Jeffrey T. Leek. 2018. “How to Share Data for Collaboration.” The American Statistician 72 (1): 53–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.2017.1375987.

• Goodman, Alyssa, Alberto Pepe, Alexander W. Blocker, Christine L. Borgman, Kyle Cranmer, Merce Crosas, Rosanne Di Stefano, et al. 2014. “Ten Simple Rules for the Care and Feeding of Scientific Data.” PLOS Computational Biology 10 (4): e1003542. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003542.

• Hart, Edmund M., Pauline Barmby, David LeBauer, François Michonneau, Sarah Mount, Patrick Mulrooney, Timothée Poisot, Kara H. Woo, Naupaka B. Zimmerman, and Jeffrey W. Hollister. 2016. “Ten Simple Rules for Digital Data Storage.” PLOS Computational Biology 12 (10): e1005097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005097.

• Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Gabrielle Appleton, Myles Axton, Arie Baak, Niklas Blomberg, et al. 2016. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3 (March): 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18.

• Also see the resources available at DataONE.