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Research Data Management

Metadata

Harvard Biomedical Data Managment: Documentation and Metadata Guidance
Recording metadata and metadata standards and guidance

Standardization

NIH Common Data Elements Repository
Common data elements (CDEs) help researchers share and combine datasets, meet funding requirements, and save time

File Organization

Data Curation

Data Curation Primers
From the Data Curation Network: Data curation primers are peer-reviewed, living documents that detail a specific subject, disciplinary area or curation task and that can be used as a reference to curate research data.

File Formats

Whenever possible, save a copy of your data in a non-proprietary (open) format for long-term
preservation and easy-access.

Data Type	Original Data Format	Preservation Friendly Formats (Open Standard, Uncompressed)
Text	Hand-written, docx, wpd, odt, rtf, txt, html, xml, pdf	xml, PDF/A, txt
Tabular Simple (minimal metadata)	csv, tsv, pipe-delimited, xls(x), ods, dif, xps	csv
Tabular Extensive (variable and value labels, missing data defined)	sav (SPSS), sas7bdat or xpt (SAS), dta (STATA)	csv, txt with setup file or associated script (r or m)
Database	mdb, dbf, sql, sqlite, db, db3, xml	xml, sqlite
Visual	static: pdf, jpeg, tiff, png, gif, bmp, moving: mpeg, mov, avi, mxf	PDF/A, tiff, JPEG2000 MPEG-4
Audio	wav(e), mp3, mp2, aiff, wma, aac, dct, flac, ogg	wave, aiff

From 'File Formats', Duke University Research Data Management Guide