Keeping files organized during your research is a key aspect of data management. It will help to keep your project on track by saving time and storage, and preventing the loss of important data. File organization makes collaboration more efficient, and will help you and others to find and reuse files in the future. When we talk about keeping data and files organized, we usually have to think about, which rules you will follow to name your files, what is the most logical way to organize your files within folders, and how you will keep track of the different versions of a file. Let's have a look at some tips and best practices. Starting with file naming conventions. The name will be the main identifier of a file, and should help you to identify what the content of the file is at a glance. To design a file naming strategy, think about the files you expect to generate during your project and what are their characteristics. For example, suppose that your research involves the creation of microscope images. What attributes would be relevant to help you locating a particular image? The collection date, a code or acronym for the experiment and so on. By concatenating these attributes, you can produce unique file names that identify the content of the file without any ambiguity. The order in which you concatenate the elements will determine how files are sorted within a folder. Therefore, think about how you would like the files to be ordered and choose the file name schema accordingly. Finally, think about whether you will produce multiple files or versions with similar characteristics. In that case, you might need to add a sequential number to the file name. Alternatively, you could think whether there is an additional attribute, for example, a code for the type of sample that could make your file names unique. When choosing a file name, there are some additional best practices that you should follow. Avoid using long names. Try to remove unnecessary elements and use codes or acronyms to make it shorter. Avoid special characters and spaces, which can create problems with certain programs. Instead, use underscores or camel case to separate words or elements in the file name. For dates, a good tip is to use the ISO standard. It will allow you to sort files chronologically. For sequential numbering, use leading zeros. This will make sure that your files are sorted in the correct order. What about folder structure? Once you have an overview of your project files and you have decided how to name them, you should think about how to arrange files into different folders. Just as with file naming, think about the properties that are important to locate files in an easy and logical way. How would you and your colleagues typically look for files? Use the most important attribute for the top level, and then create nested folders according to the relevance of the remaining categories or attributes. There are a couple of rules that you should follow to make your folder hierarchy efficient. First, avoid overlapping categories or creating similar folders, or even copies of folders in different locations. If a certain type of file could be stored in more than one location, it's time to rethink your approach. Besides, you should try to find a good balance between having folders with way too many files, and a folder structure that gets too deep. Finally, follow the file naming guidelines for folders as well. Choose names that reflect the content of the folders, and avoid using personal names. The final aspect of file organization that you should consider is version control. Version control is essential to track the history of changes that a file went through. What changed, when, and why, and who made the changes. It also allows you to locate the correct version of a file that you want to work on, and to avoid data loss. There are two types of strategies to approach version control. In some cases, manual change logs will be sufficient. This can be done by incorporating the date or a version number in the file name. When more details about the changes between different versions have to be provided, you can create a manual change log in the file header, or in a separate file. In written documents, a version control table can be a practical way to track the version history of the file. Besides, there are different tools that can be used to maintain version control automatically. These can be especially useful when you are collaborating with others and multiple changes are done regularly by different people. Many cloud storage platforms include version control functionalities, which allow you to see the version history of a file and restore previous versions. In software or code development, Git or Git-based tools, such as GitHub or GitLab, are very popular version control platforms. Let's have a look at some final tips. It is advised to take some time at the beginning of the project to plan file organization. Develop a file naming convention, decide on your folder structure, and how you will approach version control. As you make these decisions, make sure to document them. This way, you and the people you work with can easily adopt the rules you have set up. Finally, make sure to use these rules consistently. Even if at some point of the project you need to reconsider some aspects of your file organization, being consistent will ensure that moving or renaming multiple files is a straightforward process. If you want to learn more about file organization and have a look at examples of good file names or project folder structure, make sure to visit our website.