Documenting your research data is a prerequisite for data sharing and your own use of your data in the future. Good documentation helps your data be discoverable, understood, and trusted by others. Please view our individual modules for the training “Documenting Your Research Data” to learn documentation best practices by subtopic (e.g., code, tabular data, using documentation standards).

You can access these modules by logging in Blackboard with JHED and password. You first need to self-enroll with this link before start viewing your first module. 

  • Metadata and Metadata Standards

    Using metadata standards will help you stay consistent in your documentation and ensures other researchers in your field can understand and re-use your data. This module will define metadata and metadata standards, introduce different types of documentation where standards can be used, provide examples of standards in practice, and show where to find standards for your field. This module is for any researcher who wants to improve the reusability of their data, regardless of file format or discipline. 

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  • Tabular Data

    Tabular data is one of the most widely used ways to structure research data. Without good documentation of the variables/elements and values, it will be difficult to utilize your valuable research. In this module you will learn what to document about your tabular data set and how to create that documentation including discussions around codebooks and data dictionaries. This module is for researchers who work with tabular data and want to improve the reusability of their data.  

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  • Code

    Researchers often write code to acquire, manage and analyze research data. Providing good documentation for your code is important for others to understand and reuse your scripts. In this module you will learn 6 best practices tips to document code well, including giving good variable/function names, writing helpful comments, using a computational notebook, attaching a ReadMe, using a version control system and sharing code in an online repository. This module is for researchers who write code for research and want to improve documenting their scripts, code, and software. 

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