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📁 Organise your Data

Overview

This is the Organise your Data page, part of Other Tools → Zenodo in the A-LIFE RDM collection.

This page provides guidance on how to prepare and organise your data before archiving in Zenodo:

Supporting materials: Best Practices — Organising Data, FAQs
Authors: Irene Martorelli, Brett Olivier — Last modification: 2026-08-02 — Version: 0.2.0

📦 How Zenodo organises data

In Zenodo, each record corresponds to one published dataset. A record contains:

  • The data files you upload (individual files or a ZIP archive)
  • The metadata describing your dataset (title, creators, description, licence, etc.)
  • A README file — highly recommended; describes the content of your uploaded files, included inside your ZIP or as a separate file
  • A DOI assigned at the time of publication

Unlike a shared drive or folder structure, Zenodo does not have a nested folder hierarchy — each record is a flat collection of files under a single DOI. If you want to publish separate datasets (e.g. two experiments), you create two separate records.

⚠ Organise before transferring data in Zenodo

Once a record is published in Zenodo, not everything can be changed in the same way:

  • Metadata (title, creators, description, licence, etc.) — can be edited directly at any time, without creating a new version.
  • Data files (adding, removing, or modifying files) — requires creating a new version of the record. Each new version gets its own DOI, which is automatically linked to all previous versions — so existing citations still work. But ideally, you want to get it right the first time.

Taking a few minutes to organise your data before uploading will save you from having to republish. Good organisation also ensures that:

  • Others can understand and reuse your data without needing to contact you
  • Your dataset complies with FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable)
  • Your metadata accurately describes what is in the files

Follow our general guide for support on directory structure, file naming and file versioning. It applies to any tool or device, not just for Zenodo publication.

Best Practices — Organising data

What next?

Data organised and ready? Continue to Transferring Data to upload your files to Zenodo.