Fun and funny visuals, on a range of topics, from our annual Halloween issue and more.
All Data Nudges are licensed under CC BY 4.0. You are free to share, adopt, or adapt them and cite the Illinois Research Data Service.
Error Screens
October 28, 2025
Error screens – more like terror screens. These ordinary error screens have been reimagined as dire warnings of data gone dark.
Version Control
October 29, 2024
Version control can go terribly wrong when you have to stitch together competing versions, or when automatic versioning buries the one version you actually need.
Preventing Data Loss in Teams
October 31, 2023
Tips for avoiding the horrors of careless file organization, limited documentation, and insufficient data storage.
Sharing Sensitive Data
October 25, 2022
Whether you’re researching human subjects or endangered species, inappropriate data sharing is a nightmare.
2023 NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy
November 15, 2022
Announcing NIH’s new data management and sharing policy going into effect in January 2023.
Scary Storage Medium Story
October 26, 2021
Beware – if you don’t migrate your files, obsolete storage media can haunt your research and entomb your data for all eternity.
Tales of Terror: Data Management Plan Edition
October 27, 2020
There aren’t enough horror movies about life’s true terrors, like archiving your data in dangerous places. Protect yourself and your data with a solid data management plan.
Scary Data Stories from the Illinois Community
October 30, 2018
Truth is scarier than fiction. These three spooky data comics were inspired by the University of Illinois research community.