Naming Conventions

Impact Evaluation projects should follow a clear naming convention as all the files in the project will be used throughout the project duration. Since over the course of an impact evaluation project, personnel doing research, or on the field might change, it is very important to use a naming convention that not only you understand but someone looking at the files after years also understands.

Read First

Use the version control in Box/DropBox instead of naming the folders _v01, _v02, old, new, etc. Output tables, graphs, and documentations are an exception to this and it is good practice to date them. Instead of using versions, they should be dated for clarity. For example = "_2017June8" rather than "_v02".

Reasoning - 2 years down the road. ENdline, new-final-v2.

Using Box / Dropbox Version Control features

It is generally recommended that you use the Box/Dropbox or Github version control feature instead of naming the folders _v01, _v02, _old, _new, _final, etc. The only exception to this would be tables, graphs, and documentations and it is good practice to date those. For these kinds of files, it should be dated i.e. filename_2017June08 rather than filename_v02.

Important : It is important that you pay attention to your subscription of DropBox/Box when using them for version control as they only store previous versions for certain time. For example - Free Dropbox stores different versions of a files from the last 30 days. Similarly, Box does not allow users with free accounts to access versions of their files.

Please find the number of versions or the number of days More information on Dropbox's version control can be found here, here, and here.

Guidelines

Here are some of the important guidelines to follow when naming files and folders in your impact evaluation folder:

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This article is part of the topic Data Management

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