Shared work files

If you are several researchers in a project, it is important that you can all trust that your data and efforts will not accidentally be lost, and that the material is protected from unauthorized access.  

When several people collaborate on the same data material in a research project, it is crucial to keep the material organized. The group should have a strategy for folder names, file names, and file versioning, and take care to document the material well. You want to be able to easily see which is the latest version of a file, in which file a certain processing step was made, what material can be found where, and who has done what with it. A good strategy that everyone follows can save you from unnecessary work and minimize the risk for errors in the data, or even data loss.

The research group may want to work with a single, common version of the data, which is stored with write-protection and regularly backed-up. You work with the material you need and return it to storage as a new version of the data material. That way, you can avoid confusion, disorder, and possibly faulty analyses because of an error in the version of the data that one person has been working on, or because they had not updated their version of the data. One or a couple of people in the group are assigned the right to maintain and administer the data; adding new variables, correcting errors, changing and updating code, checking in and out material, and so on. They are also responsible for documenting all changes and actions on the material, and new versions of it, for example in your data management plan.

Working with a single, shared version of the data, or a database, gives your research group better control over which version of the data is being analyzed and it makes it easier to trace and recreate analyses. It will also save time and effort when the project ends, and you prepare the project for archiving and access for reuse in later research.