Frequently asked questions

Data deposited in the MRU repository should be understandable or reusable by those with a similar level of subject-matter expertise to your own. This means that your data should be well-organized, cleaned, and thoroughly documented. Consider completing the following steps, where appropriate:

1. Create a data management plan at the start of your project to outline how you will manage your data during and after the project.
2. Obtain ethics approval and participant consent to deposit data.
3. After data collection, de-identify data by removing all direct and indirect identifiers. Ensure that participants cannot be identified by deduction or through links to other datasets. Ensure that data files are well-organized, clean, and with clearly defined headings and categories.
4. Consider saving your data in preservation-friendly formats, such as CSV for tabular data or XML for text or databases, when possible. 
5. Create documentation that assists other researchers with secondary use. This may include variable descriptions, a codebook, detailed methodological descriptions, file descriptions, and other details that support independent reuse.
6. Create a readme file in TXT or PDF format that describes all of the context of the project - the research team, methods, research locations, sample information, files, terms of access, and other relevant information about the research.
7. Deposit all files and documentation and complete all relevant fields when creating the record.