ADP - SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA ARCHIVES

Collecting Data and organizing materials

During and after the project the traceability of creation and changes of research data variations needs to be assured. This is important for long-term use and transparency of the research data. For this purpose the researcher needs to appropriately organize the gathered materials already during the process of data collection:

• data files and variables need to be meaningfully named,
• appropriate formats of data files need to be selected and appropriate software needs to be used (does the software need to be stored as well?),
• safe transfer of data and possible shared use of files during the project needs to be assured,
• control over versioning of data files needs to be established.

The main question that is important for the research data lifecycle is, what sort of documentation and metadata will follow data? The following questions need to be answered:

• what information is necessary to read and understand the data in the future?
• How will you create the documentation and metadata?
• What metadata standards will you use and why?

The basic recommendations for careful research data management during the project are:

• Take care of security copies,
• Prepare documentation and metadata,
• Determine rules for access to materials and
• Safeguard your materials from unauthorized access.