Data curation primers are peer-reviewed, living documents that detail a specific subject, disciplinary area or curation task and that can be used as a reference to curate research data. The links below are to the live, editable copies in GitHub while archived pdf versions are available in the DCN repository.

All primers have been licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 license. We invite and welcome contributions and corrections to existing primers.

We also welcome new primers! Reach out with an idea, and use our public primer template to get started.

Authors of primers include archivists and data librarians who attended the 2018-2020 Specialized Data Curation Workshops presented by the Data Curation Network (IMLS RE-85-18-0040-18).


Accessibility Data PrimerCreators: Emily Oxford and Rachel Woodbrook
Mentor: ​Wendy Kozlowski
ArcGIS Pro Project Package (PPKX) Data Curation PrimerCreators: Jamie Martindale, Aditya Ranganath, Amy Work, and Melinda Kernik
Mentor: Melinda Kernik
Archaeology Data PrimerCreators: Maria Arteaga Cuevas, Rachel Fernandez, and Hollis Wittman
Mentor: Sophia Lafferty-Hess
Acrobat PDF PrimerCreators: Peace Ossom-Williamson, Nicole Contaxis, Margaret Lam and Adam Kriesberg
Mentor: ​Jake Carlson
Audiovisual Data Curation PrimerCreators: Madina Grace, Meg Jerrild, and Lauren Phegley
Mentor: JA Pryse
ATLAS.ti PrimerCreator:  Margarita Corral
Affiliated contributor: Hannah Hadley
Mentor: ​Dave Fearon
CARE Data Principles, Indigenous data, Data related to Indigenous Peoples and InterestCreators (in alphabetical order): Sarah Barsness, Jewel Cummins, Maria Victoria Fernandez, Ann Myatt James, Katie Pierce Farrier, Jonathan Pringle, Stephanie Russo Carroll, Riley Taitingfong, Alex Wieker
Mentors: Wanda Marsolek, Shanda Hunt
Clinical Trials Data PrimerCreators: Liliana Gonzalez, Mikala Narlock, Shawna Taylor
Mentors: Jen Darragh and Sophia Lafferty-Hess
Column Binary Data PrimerCreators: Jessica Ko and Kelsie Norek
Mentors: Wendy Kozlowski and Neggin Keshavarzian
Confocal Microscopy Image PrimerCreators: Susan Ivey, Amy Koshoffer, Gretchen Sneff and Huajin Wang
Mentor: Lisa Johnston
Consent Forms PrimerCreators: Shanda Hunt, Alicia Hofelich Mohr and Rachel Woodbrook
Databases PrimerCreator: Xuying Xin
Mentor: Dave Fearon
Genetic Data Curation PrimerCreators: Laura Bowman, Shannon Sheridan, Briana Wham, and Sarah Wright
Mentor: Sarah Wright
Geodatabase PrimerCreators: Andrew Battista, Tom Brittnacher, Zenobie Garrett, Jennifer Moore and Carrie Pirmann
Mentor: Mara Blake
GeoJSON PrimerCreators: Nadia Dixson, Genevieve Milliken, Keshav Mukunda, Reina Murray and Rachel Starry
Mentor: Mara Blake
GeoTIFF PrimerCreators: Courtney Kearney, Nick Ruhs, Mara Sedlins, Tracy Tien, Jessica Trelogan and John Watts
Mentor: Jennifer Moore
Google Docs PrimerCreators: Nadia Dixson and Adam Kriesberg
Mentor: Sophia Lafferty-Hess
Human Participants Data Essentials PrimerCreators: Jen Darragh, Alicia Hofelich Mohr, Shanda Hunt, Rachel Woodbrook, Dave Fearon, Jennifer Moore and Hannah Hadley
Interdisciplinary and Highly Collaborative Research (IHCR) Data PrimerCreators: Inna Kouper, Andrew M. Johnson, Jordan Wrigley, and Aditya Ranganath
Mentors: Neggin Keshavarzian and Mikala Narlock
ISO Images PrimerCreators: Kate Barron and Jonathan Bohan
Mentor: Cynthia Hudson Vitale
Jupyter Notebooks PrimerCreators: Daina Bouquin, Sophie Hou, Matthew Benzing and Lee Wilson
Mentor: Susan Borda
Mass Spectrometry PrimerCreators: Brian Westra, Ye Li, Nick Ruhs, and Leah Rae McEwen
Mentors: Lisa Johnston and Wendy Kozlowski
Matlab PrimerCreators: Sam Sciolla and Susan Borda
Microsoft Access PrimerCreators: Fernando Rios
Mentor: Dave Fearon
Microsoft Excel PrimerCreators: Greg Janée, Sandra Sawchuk and Ho Jung Yoo
Mentor: Wendy Kozlowski
Neuroimaging DICOM and NIfTI PrimerCreators: Michael Moore, Brandon Patterson, Sara Samuel, Helenmary Sheridan, Chris Sorensen
Mentor: Joel Herndon
netCDF Primer and Tutorial using an NCAR datasetCreator: Sam Sciolla, Susan Borda and Sophie Hou
NVivo PrimerCreator: Hannah Hadley
Affiliated contributor: Margarita Corral
Mentor: Dave Fearon
Oral History Interviews PrimerCreators: J.A. Pryse, Matthew Harp, Sara Mannheimer, Wanda Marsolek and Wind Cowles
Mentor: Lisa Johnston
Python Data Curation PrimerCreators: Megan Sheffield, Jonathan Hernandez, Justin de la Cruz and Kaypounyers Maye
Mentor: Erich Purpur, University of Virginia
Qualitative Data PrimerCreators: Diana Castillo, Heather Coates, Mikala Narlock
Mentor: Shanda Hunt
R PrimerCreators: Lynda Kellam, Katherine Koziar and Stanislav Pejša
Mentor: Joel Herndon
SAS PrimerCreator: Qiong Xu
Mentor: Jen Darragh
Sensitive Biodiversity Data Essentials PrimerCreators: Jen Jordan, Carlos Ramirez-Reyes, Shawna Taylor, Joanna Thielen, and Briana Wham
Mentor: Shawna Taylor
Simple Darwin Core for Non-Biologists PrimerCreators: Megan N. O’Donnell and Leslie M. Delserone
Mentor: Jake Carlson
SPSS PrimerCreators: Sai Deng, Joshua Dull, Jeanine Finn and Shahira Khair
Mentor: Sophia Lafferty-Hess
STL PrimerCreators: Elizabeth Blackwood, Doug Joubert and James Sobczak
Mentor: Jennifer Moore
Tableau PrimerCreators: Christine Malinowski and Trisha Adamus
Mentor: Wendy Kozlowski
Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) PrimerCreators: Courtney Dalton, Emily Kilcer, Katie Walpole, and Sarah Swanz
Mentors: Sarah Swanz and Mikala Narlock
Twitter PrimerCreators: Marley Kalt and Dorris Scott
Mentor: Wendy Kozlowski
WordPress.com PrimerCreator: Heather James
Mentor: Lisa Johnston