11  File Naming Conventions

In your README.md, you should define naming conventions for your project files. The main elements for a file naming convention are metadata, separator, and version tracking. I recommend the File Naming Conventions Worksheet (Briney, 2020) to develop your file naming conventions.

Metadata	Separator	Version Tracking
3 to 5 pieces max (e.g. sample ID, date in ISO 8601 format such as YYYY-MM-DD)	Dashes (-), underscore (_), or camel case (i.e., capitalize each word without spaces)	Numeric (e.g., v01) or Status (e.g., raw, processed)

Note

My naming convention for R Markdown analysis files is: “analysis-YYYY-MM-DD-version.Rmd” where version starts with “v01.” This is my first analysis file, “analysis-YYYY-MM-DD-v01.Rmd”