There are six key recommendations for managing your data/digital materials to ensure their longevity and usefulness:
- store and back them up
- keep data/digital materials in sustainable formats
- include metadata to preserve contextual information about who collected/created it, the date, instrument settings, etc.
- organize and structure them using file naming/versioning conventions, ontologies/vocabularies, and/or databases
- keep them secure and implement procedures for keeping sensitive data private
- include explanations about how data may be re-used and how the source of the data should be acknowledged