The perfection hurdle

"We discuss many hurdles that investigators face when sharing their research datasets: cost, credit, and fear of misinterpretation and scooping, to name a few. I think there is a stealthy hurdle a bit further out. I’ve run smack-dab into it, and ouch it hurts my shins. See, I have a bunch of projects that are almost done. Papers accepted, proofs being proofed, now the publishers want the final data archiving urls. Yay, right? Right! Except that now I actually have to archive the data. I’m totally on board with this, in theory. I think it is a good idea: in general, for me personally, for these projects specifically. I’m not worried about cost, credit, or fear of misinterpretation or scooping. Then why am I hesitating, why have I put it off till now? Why, if I weren’t so committed to the cause, might I not do it at all? My spreadsheets and my scripts, they just aren’t as elegant in real life as they are in my head. My scripts need more commenting, my README needs more detail, my column names need more consistency. I did try to follow best practices when I set them up, but that was many months ago and now I know better and I want to do better...."