Resource list for "better" and best-practices for data management in registry-based research

Table of Contents

• Commentary on avoiding technical debt
• Creating a data management plan
• Writing and documenting code
• Tips for data visualization
• Resources for Stata users
• Resources for R users

Commentary on avoiding technical debt

Avoiding technical debt in social science research
https://medium.com/pew-research-center-decoded/avoiding-technical-debt-in-social-science-research-54618194790a

Five selfish reasons to work reproducibly
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0850-7

Creating a data management plan

Data Management Plan Tools: Overview and Evaluation
https://zenodo.org/records/8369596

Ten Simple Rules for Creating a Good Data Management Plan
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004525

Writing and documenting code

The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship
https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618

Best practices in statistical computing
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9662695/

Ten simple rules for reproducible computational research
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003285

Good enough practices in scientific computing
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005510

Variable Names in Survey Research
https://medium.com/\@janschenk/variable-names-in-survey-research-a18429d2d4d8

Introduction to version control for researchers
https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2025/05000/advancing_reproducible_research_through_version.8.aspx

Data visualization

The visual display of quantitative information, by Edward Tufte
https://www.edwardtufte.com/book/the-visual-display-of-quantitative-information/

Other books by Edward Tufte
https://www.edwardtufte.com/book/

The grammar of graphics, by Leland Wilkinson
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/0-387-28695-0

Data visualization: a view of every points of view column
https://communities.springernature.com/posts/data-visualization-a-view-of-every-points-of-view-column

California Teachers Study "viz of the month"
https://www.calteachersstudy.org/post/introducing-the-cts-viz-of-the-month

Ten simple rules for better figures
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003833

Resources for Stata users

Stata cheat sheets
https://www.stata.com/flyers/stata-cheat-sheets/

Suggestions on Stata programming style
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1536867X0500500406

Visual overview for creating graphs
https://www.stata.com/support/faqs/graphics/gph/stata-graphs/

Resources for R users

R cheat sheets
https://rviews.rstudio.com/2021/03/10/rstudio-open-source-resorurces/

Google's R style guide
https://google.github.io/styleguide/Rguide.html

Tidyverse style guide
https://style.tidyverse.org/

stylr: non-invasive pretty printing of R code
https://styler.r-lib.org/

How to automatically document data with the codebook package to facilitate data reuse
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2515245919838783

The R graph gallery
https://r-graph-gallery.com/