Documenting your Data in Research Drive¶
Overview
This is the Documenting your Data page, part of VU Tools → Research Drive in the A-LIFE RDM collection.
This page covers:
Supporting materials: Essentials - README
Authors: Irene Martorelli, Brett Olivier — Last modification: 2026-08-02 — Version: 0.1.0
Documenting your data with a README¶
Unlike Yoda, Research Drive does not provide a standard metadata form to fill in. This is because Research Drive is designed purely for the active (warm) storage of research data during a project, and not for long-term archiving or publishing — so it does not require the structured metadata needed for a data catalogue entry or a DOI.
We recommend including a README file in your Research Drive space. A README helps you for three reasons:
- Navigating your folders — it helps you, and your collaborators, understand the structure and content of your project space.
- Helping others — it helps anyone with access to your space understand what the data is and how it should be used.
- Reused for archiving — a README written in Research Drive is not wasted effort. It travels with you: when you transfer your data to an archiving solution such as Yoda, it helps you complete the mandatory metadata form there, and can equally be reused as documentation for other tools.
README templates and further guidance
See the Essentials - README section in our GEMs for a copy-paste template and practical tips.
What next?
Research Drive is not an archiving solution. For this reason, if you want to move and use your data for publication, we recommend transferring your data to another solution such as Yoda or Zenodo.
Please follow our documentation steps for either archiving and publishing in Yoda or archiving and publishing in Zenodo.
You can also contact your research data manager for further support.