Abducted by Aliens? 🛸 Building Sustainable File, Folder & Documentation Workflows Online
You arrive at work to see your project's primary investigator/research coordinator/key graduate student disappearing into a UFO's buzzing blue beam; with all their project knowledge and disconnected laptop gone forever…or at least til the aliens return them home. While an alien abduction is unlikely to strike your research team, life happens: research coordinators get hired into roles at another university, graduate students return home, PIs go on research leave or get sick unexpectedly and need to step back. Clearly writing out research processes, clear file and folder workflows, organized data storage systems, and more are excellent research practices to make sure everyone is on the same page and your research project is resilient to change. It can also help keep qualitative coding and variables or units of measurement in quantitative projects consistent across multiple researchers. Even if you're going solo as a graduate student, documenting your data and keeping a good research log will help you unpack what you did when it comes time to write up your project.
No prior knowledge is required! This session is designed for researchers who want to think through their documentation and workflows; from graduate students working alone to tenured faculty with a huge research team. Undergraduate students interested in future research might also find it interesting.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Create quality file names from bad ones
- Design folder structures that make sense for their project
- Identify types of documentation and locate templates and resources to help them create their own
- Transfer knowledge of storage workflows into their own projects
Details: Any preparatory work for the session can be found on its information page. This virtual workshop will be recorded and shared on the same page, and discoverable via the Sherman Centre's Online Learning Catalogue.
Certificate Eligibility: This workshop is eligible for the Sherman Centre's certificate program. For more information, visit scds.ca/certificate-program. It is also eligible for the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities. To learn more, visit ccdhhn.ca or contact scds@mcmaster.ca.
- Date:
- Wednesday, March 10, 2027
- Time:
- 10:30am - 11:30am
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Online:
- This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.
- Audience:
- McMaster + Community
- Categories:
- DRI Training Research Data Management SCDS Sponsored Events Workshops
THE SHERMAN CENTRE FOR DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP
The Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship connects people, builds community, and enables research to support and advance digital scholarship. We work with students, faculty, staff, and community collaborators at McMaster and beyond to support research, teaching, learning, and knowledge mobilization through digital scholarship.
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CODE OF CONDUCT
The Sherman Centre and the McMaster University Libraries are committed to fostering a supportive and inclusive environment for its presenters and participants. As a participant in this session, you agree to support and help cultivate an experience that is collaborative, respectful, and inclusive, as well as free of harassment, discrimination, and oppression. We reserve the right to remove participants who exhibit harassing, malicious or persistently disruptive behaviour.
We strive to make this event accessible to everyone. Where possible, sessions are recorded and include live captioning, and we will share recordings, slides, and transcripts afterward so you can revisit the content at your own pace. Because these materials are provided, and to help protect participant privacy and consent, we ask that attendees do not use AI note-taking or automated recording tools (such as Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Zoom AI Companion, or similar apps) without prior permission from the organizers.
Please refer to our code of conduct webpage for more information.
Danica Evering is a Research Data Management Specialist grounded in curiosity and a deep commitment to ethics. They braid together broad fluency in social practice art, healthcare, community research, data, and systems development to provide comprehensive RDM services. Danica is available to help students, postdocs, faculty, and staff with RDM through the data lifecycle—Data Management Plans, storage and backup, data security, data sharing. Danica fosters active interest in research data management across disciplines, with a knack for engaging researchers who might not even realize they have data to manage. Outside of work they sing in a choir, play PC games, maintain an art writing practice, grow a garden, contribute Wikipedia articles, and run.
Isaac Pratt is a Research Data Management Specialist. Isaac holds a PhD in Anatomy & Cell Biology, and has research experience is in biomedical science and social science, specifically in Physics, Biological Anthropology, and Anatomy. He is available to help with any RDM related questions including data management planning, data storage & backup, data security, and data deposit and sharing. Isaac is a member of MREB and can help with questions about data management for ethics and sensitive data.
The Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship supports McMaster students, faculty, and staff, as well as anyone curious about digital scholarship. From research and teaching to training and technical support, we’re here to help bring digital projects to life at every stage!
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