To ensure long-term access and reusability of your data, the BiUM publication management unit encourages you to deposit and share your files using standard preservation and Open file formats most likely to be accessible in the future.
As technology evolves, it is important to consider which file formats you will use for preserving files in the long run.
File formats most likely to be accessible in the future have the following characteristics:
We can provide you with guidance on which format to use for long-term preservation and sharing of your data. Practical courses concerning these aspects are also provided by our service on a regular basis - link.
For help on long-term preservation standards format have a look at our BiUM Recommended Files format.
Recommended Standards Files format from our service for data sharing or archiving (ranked in descending order of preference):
Text: • PDF/A – PDF/X • Plain text (.txt) • Open Office (.odt) • XML / HTML (with schema) • Word XML (.docx) • RTF • LaTeX
Images: • Bitmap – TIFF (uncompressed) – PNG – JPEG2000 – (GIF) • Vector – SVG
Tabular data: • CSV (comma, tab, semi-colon) • Open Office (.ods) • XML / HTML (with schema) • Excel (.xlsx) • .SQL
Video: • MPEG-4 (H.264) (~ MP4) • Motion JPEG 2000 • MPEG-1/2
Audio: • WAV (preferably Broadcast Wave Format, LPCM) • AIFF (LPCM) • OGG Vorbis • MP3 MPEG Layer III • AAC MPEG-4