Proprietary Formats
If you're working with a specialized software that forces you to use a proprietary or nonstandard file format, you can do a few things to help ensure your data's usability in the future.
- Look to see if there is an alternative file format that is compatible with the data you collected
- Ask us to see if there's an alternative file format that's compatible with the data you collected
- Note in your ReadMe file or other documentation what software, including the version number, you used and, if possible, keep a copy of that software available as long as the data exists. We can talk to you about that to.
Resources and References
- Recommended Standards from the Library of Congress - most of the suggested formats listed here are pulled from this resource.
- Managing and Sharing Research Data: Best Practices for Researchers. See page 12 (PDF page 16) for information about file formats
- Table of File Formats from the National Archives
- Research Data Management: File Formats from University of Oregon Libraries
Curating Data Formats
Do you need to review data that is in a specific format you are unfamiliar in? The Data Curation Network regularly produces Curation Primers on various file formats or data types with information on how to evaluate if the file (not the content) to see how to make the data more ethical, reusable, and understandable.
Here are some of the great primers to investigate:
- GeoDatabase Primer (.gdb)
- GeoTIFF Primer (.tif, .tiff)
- Human Participants Data
- Neuroimaging DICOM (.dcm) and NIfTI (.nii, .nii.gz)
- PDF Documents (.pdf)
Quantitative Data
Tabular data with minimal metadata
Preferred:
- comma separated values file (.csv)
- tab-delimited file (.tsv)
Also acceptable:
- OpenDocument Format Spreadsheet (.ods)
Tabular data with extensive metadata
Preferred:
- R (.rdata)
Also acceptable:
- SPSS portable format (.por)
- eXtensible Mark-up Language (.xml)
Textual Qualitative Data
Preferred:
- eXtensible Mark-up Language (.xml)
- Rich Text Format (.rtf)
- plain text format (.txt)
- PDF/UA (ISO 14289-1 compliant) or PDF/A (ISO 19005-compliant)
Also acceptable:
- PDF (highest quality available, with features such as searchable text, embedded fonts, lossless compression, high resolution images, device-independent specification of color space, content tagging)
- OpenDocument Text Format (.odf)
- HTML
Geospatial Data
Preferred:
- Shapefile (.shp, .shx, .dbf)
- Esri File Geodatabase (.gdb)
- GeoTIFF (.tif, .tfw)
Also acceptable:
- Keyhole Markup Language (.kml)
- Geographic Markup Language (.gml or .xml)
Find tools for converting between Geospatial file types on our Spatial Data page
Digital Images
Preferred:
- TIFF (.tif)
Also acceptable:
- JPEG2000 (.jpg)
- PNG (.png)
- JPEG/JFIF (.jpg)
Video
Preferred*:
- Matroska Multimedia Container (.mkv)
- Motion JPEG 2000 (.jp2)
Also acceptable:
- MPEG4 (.mp4)
*uncompressed files are preferred over compressed files. If compression must occur, it needs to be lossless.
Digital Audio (media independent)
Preferred*:
- Broadcast WAVE included embedded metadata (.bwf)
- WAVE (.wav)
- Audio Interchange Format (.aif; .aiff)
Also acceptable:
- MPEG-3 (.mp3)
*uncompressed files are preferred over compressed files. If compression must occur, it needs to be lossless.
Spectra
NMR, IR, Raman, UV, Mass Spec data
Preferred:
- JCAMP
Computer Aided Design (CAD)
Preferred:
- Extensible 3D (.x3D, .x3dv)
- AutoCAD DXF (.dxf)
Also acceptable:
- PDF/E
- Universal 3D (.u3d)
- Product Representation Compact (.prc)
- AutoCAD (.dwg, .dxf)
