Sharing the data that underpin your ETD can be beneficial to both you and to others. It promotes new research discoveries, supports replication of your work, and can increase your citation rates. D-Scholarship@Pitt can provide long-term storage for your data and tracks how others are using your work through metrics that you can then reference to demonstrate impact.To save time at the end of your project, put a plan in place for managing your data at the start: 

1. Develop a consistent foldering approach to organizing your files and a file naming convention that you follow closely.
2. Document your research workflow and processes that you performed on your data.
3. Keep the acronym LOCKSS in mind -- Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe! Save more than one copy of your files and in more than one location. In addition to saving files to your desktop or laptop, consider backing them up on an external hard drive. All Pitt users have unlimited storage space on Box, a cloud-based option -- make use of for collaborative work and for securely storing your files.
4. Familiarize yourself with a guide that the library put together to help you prepare your data to share via D-Scholarship@Pitt.