4.1 Organizing data for publication

Data used during the active phase of a research project will need to be reviewed after that portion of the project has ended. Data may need further organization and documentation and may need to be reformatted for deposit into an archive or for secondary use.

Data management plan

Follow the data management plan that you established before data collection began. This will save you a lot of time during this part of the project since most of the organization and documentation will be in place.

Organizing the Data

Make sure the database or file structure is organized in a way that others can follow it and access specific elements.
The way you organize the data you create will depend on the nature of the data, how it is used and what type of software packages created and/or manage the data.
For quantitative data:
Organize the data in either,

Raw form (like ASCII) with data documentation that explains the organization so that another user can use whatever statistical application to analyze it,
Raw form (like ASCII) alongside the program files so they are ready for analysis in a statistical software package,
In a "system file" from a specific software package.

For qualitative data:
Organization will be based on the nature of the files and how they relate to each other.

Transcriptions of audio or moving image files should have corresponding names if the audio or visual files are digital.

Linking to Other Datasets

Whether you should save a copy of external data or just provide a link to it will depend on the nature of the data itself and how it is used with the primary dataset. This would include datasets like:

Census data

Private secondary data

Go to 4.2 Working with a Repository/Archivist

Maintained by: Erin O'Meara, erino@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 11/11/2007