Documents and digital texts: A guide to good practice

The most common file types created during a research project are various types of documents and text files. Whatever the type of research project, a final report in the form of a text document will be written, if nothing else. Apart from reports, documents that describe various work processes, surveys, metadata documents, etc., are normally created. 

This guide is intended to provide an overview of diverse types of binary and plain text files. In addition to reviewing common file types and file types suitable for archiving, this guide will discuss the different elements/objects that make up a document and how different ways of creating elements affect them. We will also discuss the archival strategy that may be used to ensure that these are maintained after preparation for archiving.