{"id":186,"date":"2025-11-27T12:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T17:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=186"},"modified":"2026-03-01T21:13:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T02:13:18","slug":"what-is-data-documentation","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/chapter\/what-is-data-documentation\/","title":{"raw":"What is Data Documentation?","rendered":"What is Data Documentation?"},"content":{"raw":"<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/part\/module-3-data-documentation\/\">Module Home<\/a><\/h4>\r\n<h4><img class=\"wp-image-735 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-300x293.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1142\" height=\"1115\" \/><\/h4>\r\n<h4>Lesson 1 of 17<\/h4>\r\n<h3>Data documentation is the practice of recording how your data was collected, processed, and organized.\u00a0It describes your data.<\/h3>\r\n<h3>Examples include:<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Codebooks that detail variables<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Readme (e.g., plain text) files that explain your research project and its file and folder structure<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Explanations of how you name your files<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Any other types of documentation you create to describe your data<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nData documentation is a way to put the FAIR principles into practice (see Module 1: Introduction to RDM for more information on FAIR principles). Part of what makes data FAIR is that the data are documented and have adequate metadata (i.e., that the data is described). When data are made available to others, good documentation and metadata make that data easier to find, access, process, or combine with other data, and use.\r\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/chapter\/metadata\/\">Next Lesson<\/a><\/h4>","rendered":"<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/part\/module-3-data-documentation\/\">Module Home<\/a><\/h4>\n<h4><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-735 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-300x293.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1142\" height=\"1115\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-300x293.jpg 300w, https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-1024x1001.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-768x751.jpg 768w, https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-65x64.jpg 65w, https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-225x220.jpg 225w, https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2528\/2025\/11\/12-350x342.jpg 350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1142px) 100vw, 1142px\" \/><\/h4>\n<h4>Lesson 1 of 17<\/h4>\n<h3>Data documentation is the practice of recording how your data was collected, processed, and organized.\u00a0It describes your data.<\/h3>\n<h3>Examples include:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Codebooks that detail variables<\/li>\n<li>Readme (e.g., plain text) files that explain your research project and its file and folder structure<\/li>\n<li>Explanations of how you name your files<\/li>\n<li>Any other types of documentation you create to describe your data<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Data documentation is a way to put the FAIR principles into practice (see Module 1: Introduction to RDM for more information on FAIR principles). Part of what makes data FAIR is that the data are documented and have adequate metadata (i.e., that the data is described). When data are made available to others, good documentation and metadata make that data easier to find, access, process, or combine with other data, and use.<\/p>\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/chapter\/metadata\/\">Next Lesson<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"author":2543,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-186","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":184,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2543"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":736,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186\/revisions\/736"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/184"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/186\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/rdmoer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}