Organizing Your Data#
Understanding the Structure
MaterialsCommons organizes data in a hierarchical structure:
Project: The top-level container for related research
Studies: Subdivisions within a project that represent specific experiments, simulations or research phases
Example Directory Structure#
Before uploading to MaterialsCommons you should organize your research data. Below is an example of how to organize your local files:
ProjectName/
├── README.md # Project overview.
├── Study1/
│ ├── README.md # Study overview.
│ ├── study1.xlsx # Spreadsheet with metadata to be processed
│ ├── raw_data/ # Original, unprocessed data
│ ├── processed_data/ # Analyzed or transformed data
│ ├── metadata/ # Documentation specific to this study
│ └── scripts/ # Analysis scripts and code
├── Study2/
│ ├── README.md # Study overview.
│ ├── study2.xlsx # Spreadsheet with metadata to be processed
│ ├── raw_data/
│ ├── processed_data/
│ ├── metadata/
│ └── scripts/
└── project_docs/ # Project-level documentation
Directory Structure Summary#
Each project follows a standardized layout:
A root
README.md
file containing the project overviewMultiple study folders (e.g.,
Study1
,Study2
), each containing:Study-specific
README.md
Excel spreadsheet for metadata
raw_data
folder for original dataprocessed_data
folder for analyzed resultsmetadata
folder for study documentationscripts
folder for analysis code
A
project_docs
folder for project-level documentation
Note
This structure organizes your research data by:
Placing your research project data in a top level directory
Creating separate directories for each study
Keeping all study data together.