The guide is copied from the Cornell University, Research Data Management Service Group (https://data.research.cornell.edu/content/readme) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
A readme file provides information about a data file and is intended to help ensure that the data can be correctly interpreted, by yourself at a later date or by others when sharing or publishing data. Standards-based metadata is generally preferable, but where no appropriate standard exists, for internal use, writing “readme” style metadata is an appropriate strategy.
Want a template? Download one and adapt it for your own data!: cornell.box.com/v/ReadmeTemplate
Best practices
Create readme files for logical "clusters" of data. In many cases it will be appropriate to create one document for a dataset that has multiple, related, similarly formatted files, or files that are logically grouped together for use (e.g. a collection of Matlab scripts). Sometimes it may make sense to create a readme for a single data file.
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- Count of number of variables, and number of cases or rows
- Variable list, including full names and definitions (spell out abbreviated words) of column headings for tabular data
- Units of measurement
- Definitions for codes or symbols used to record missing data
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used
Want a template? Download Download one and adapt it for your own data!: cornell.box.com/v/ReadmeTemplate
References
The preceding guidelines have been adapted from several sources by the Cornell University, Research Data Management Service Group (https://data.research.cornell.edu/content/readme) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Additional sources include:, including:
Best practices for creating reusable data publications. Dryad. 2019. https://datadryad.org/stash/best_practices
Introduction to Ecological Metadata Language (EML). The Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity. 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120424124714/http://knb.ecoinformatics.org/eml_metadata_guide.html
Related information
Document and Store Data Using Stable File Formats. DataONE. http://www.dataone.org/best-practices/document-and-store-data-using-stable-file-formats. Useful information about file formats.
File formats. Cornell Research Data Management Service Group. http://data.research.cornell.edu/content/file-formats
File management. Cornell Research Data Management Service Group. http://data.research.cornell.edu/content/file-management
Introduction to Intellectual Property Rights in Data Management. Cornell Research Data Management Service Group. http://data.research.cornell.edu/content/intellectual-property
Metadata and Describing Data. Cornell Research Data Management Service Group. http://data.research.cornell.edu/content/writing-metadata