LibGuides: SOM Data Management: Naming and Format

File Organization

File Naming
File Formats

Source: File Naming Best Practices document created by Christine Malinowski, MIT Libraries

The file formats you use for your data directly impact future users' ability to access and open that data.

Formats most likely to be accessible in the future include:

Non-proprietary, not tied to a specific software product
Unencrypted
Uncompressed
Common, used by the research community
Standard representation, such as ASCII, Unicode
Open, documented standard

Examples of preferred formats:

PDF/A, not Word
ASCII, not Excel
MPEG-4, not Quicktime
TIFF or JPEG2000, not GIF or JPEG
XML or RDF, not RDBMS

Additional Resources on File Formats:

Best Practices for File Formats, Created by Stanford Libraries
Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement 2018-2019

Source: Data Organization, Created by University of Arizona, University Libraries

Contact Us

For questions or comments, email us at medicine.datacatalog@hofstra.edu.

STRIDES Initiative

The NIH Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability (STRIDES) Initiative allows NIH to explore the use of cloud environments to streamline NIH data use by partnering with commercial providers. Click here to get more information.