How do I prepare my data for deposit in the MRU Data Repository?
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:
- Create a data management plan at the start of your project to outline how you will manage your data during and after the project.
- Obtain ethics approval and participant consent to deposit data.
- 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.
- Consider saving your data in preservation-friendly formats, such as CSV for tabular data or XML for text or databases, when possible.
- 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.
- 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.
- Deposit all files and documentation and complete all relevant fields when creating the record.