Provide robust documentation for your data and software
Data and software may be publicly available but if they are not well-documented, then they are not completely accessible to all.
Documentation in the form of machine-readable metadata and readme files are crucial for any use or reuse of data and software. It is incredibly hard to responsibly re-use or interpret data or software without robust documentation explaining who, what, where, when, why, and how.
Have you ever returned to your data or software after a two-week vacation and thought, “what is this?” or “why did I do it that way?” Now, imagine that you have never seen the data or software before. What information would you need to know to understand and use them? That is the type of information that you need to include in your documentation.
Action: Learn more about creating metadata for data and software.
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