Best pratiques

In order to avoid data losses, it is important to keep in mind some good practices for data storage:

Where to store my data ?

Important data should be kept in secure location. Avoid storing your data on your laptop or on commercial external solution (Dropbox, Google Drive). They may be read by other people and you could lost data property. 

We advise you to keep 3 copies of important data and at least two of them outside your laptop. if you store data on your laptop, make sure they are properly backed up regularly. 

Please, use UCLouvain recommended solutions (Sharepoint Online, OneDrive) : this is the best solution to guarantee RGPD, ethical requirement, and intellectual property. Storage solutions depend on various criteria: for example, do you want to share this data with your research partners? How large is your data? 

How can I do this ?

If several versions of a datasets are produced, it is best to follow a file naming convention. 

Not all these versions have to be store in 3 copies, but keep at least the raw data, the cured one, and the versions used for publications.

At the end of the project, deposit your data on a repository, where it can be preserved for the long term

You can find out more about storage solutions at UCLouvain and their advantages by following this link