Start a new topic

File Naming Guidance

When uploading data to your data specific project, all files must start with a prefix that uses the following naming convention:



The file name prefix consists of six components separated by underscores when applicable:

  1. The phrase “RMIP”
  2. The project identifier is a 3-digit code that assigned to the study by the IDCCH
  3. The participant ID is a unique deidentified identifier assigned to a participant (e.g., “001”, “A01”, “123456”) by the RMIP investigator and should remain constant across the project. 
  4. The discriminator is an alphabetic character assigned to a particular biospecimen collection event
  5. The identifier is a numeric character assigned to a particular biospecimen collection event
  6. The vial identifier is an alphabetic character assigned to a specific biospecimen collection aliquot


The combination of the sample discriminator and sample identifier uniquely identifies every collection event across all participants for the study. A Microsoft Excel workbook has been provided in Appendix B of the Data Management Plan for recording collection events and includes prepopulated columns with appropriate discriminator-identifier pairings. If the data were not produced directly from a biospecimen (e.g., MRI, echocardiogram) then the prefix would only include the first three components of the prefix. 


Following the prefix, filenames should include a description of the data and terminate with the file extension. The format of the data description is flexible and left to the investigator to determine what is useful and appropriate. 


Study investigators are also encouraged to add keyword tags to their files. Guidance on how to add file tags can be found within the following forum post: File Tagging Guidance


Login or Signup to post a comment