File naming of research data plays an important role in the understanding of research data after publication, but also already in the documentation during the project. It is important to establish clear and consistent file naming at the beginning of the project and then maintain it. This is especially essential if the data are shared by many researchers in a collaborative project. Some useful elements may be the author's initials, a technical short description, or the creation date (especially for version control).
1. short but explanatory
2. no special characters, spaces, punctuation marks, or umlauts
3. capital letters and underscores used
4. consistent naming of capital letters (influences sorting)
5. date format YYYYMMDD
6. numbers are always two or three digits, with 0 as a placeholder
7. arrange elements of the file name for fast finding ( avoid "test" or "draft")
8. versions as V with numbering (V01, V02, etc.)
9. do not repeat information from folder names in file names
To give you an impression of good and rather poor file naming, here are a few examples:
