Transparent: In many cases, researchers are interested in a high-level analysis of the data, not just the raw data itself. The process of converting raw data to high-level results usually requires many small steps. Each data processing step yields an intermediate result, which may be of interest in its own right or may be useful in other analyses later. When the data pipeline is complete, there can be a large, complicated web of data processing steps between the raw data and the final results. It is imperative that the full flow of data from the original, raw, file all the way through to the final analysis is transparent.