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Welcome

This site contains practical, plain-language guides for managing and storing research data in the Lloyd Lab.

Who should read this?

All Llyod lab members should read through these instructions to understand our data management practices. They expectation is that everyone follows these practices to ensure data integrity, reproducibility, and collaboration. If you are new to the lab, please read through all the sections relevant to your role.

Why is this important?

Proper data management is crucial for several reasons:

  • Data Integrity: Ensures that data remains accurate and unaltered over time.
  • Reproducibility: Facilitates the ability to reproduce results by maintaining organized and well-documented data.
  • Collaboration: Makes it easier for team members to find and use shared data.
  • Compliance: Meets institutional and funding agency requirements for data handling and storage.
  • Efficiency: Saves time and resources by preventing data loss and reducing redundancy.

If you are not storing and managing data properly, you risk losing valuable research data, facing difficulties in reproducing experiments, and hindering collaboration within the lab.

For example, if you have saved your data only to OneDrive, the lab will loose access to it when you leave. Although there are some work arounds to prevent this loss, it is much better to store data using the lab's shared storage strategy from the beginning.

Getting started

Start with any page from the menu at the top. Suggested starting points:

  • Project structure: where files should go and why
  • Backups: how we keep data safe

If you get stuck or something is unclear, please contact the Data Steward listed on the Help page of the main README.