Organizing Your Research Project

Use this page when opening, running, documenting, or closing a project. The goal is that a colleague who joins in month six — or picks the project up after you leave — can find the protocol, understand the data, and rerun the analysis without interviewing you.

Work in progress

Javier will cover more on these topics in his fall 2026 best practices for research training sessions

Possible topics to add

• Starting and registering a project
• Storage locations and folder structure
• File and repository naming conventions
• Project README and decision log
• Documentation expectations
• Closing and archiving a project

Related pages

• Resources — storage, computing, and the tools a project runs on
• IRB processes — approvals to obtain before data collection starts
• Publication checklist — what a well-organised project makes easy at the end