Recommended Preservation File Formats for Text

Owned by Mandy Gooch
Last updated: 2024-53-15
2 min read

This article offers recommendations for file formats that support long-term preservation and usability of digital textual works.

File Formats for Preservation

Not all file formats are created equal. Just like computers and software change, file formats have evolved over time, and some have fared better in the long-term than others. Have you recently tried to open a WordStar, pre-1997 Microsoft Word, or WordPerfect file? If you have, you most likely had a hard time opening the file on a modern computer. As you think about managing your data, we recommend you select file formats that will be usable into the long-term, meaning a future user can open the file in 5 or 10 years.  

A data management and archiving best practice is to select preservation file formats and/or formats that are commonly used in your scientific community. As you know your scientific field best, this guidance focuses on file format recommendations for the preservation of digital text. The reference section includes resources from the digital preservation community that you can peruse for additional information.

We have compiled a table with file format recommendations organized by primary and secondary categories. The primary recommendations are formats that the digital preservation community is confident will have long-term use. The secondary recommendations are formats that are likely to work in the medium-term but might need to be migrated to another format for the long-term. For data sharing policies, both primary and secondary recommendations are solid choices for your text data.

Recommended File Formats for Digital Textual Works

Digital Text Types

Primary Recommendations

Secondary Recommendations

Digital Text Types

Primary Recommendations

Secondary Recommendations

Word processing

.pdf/a

.pdf

.rtf

Text

.txt

 

Structured text (markup)

.xml

.xhtml or .html

.dtd

.tex (LaTex)

Presentation slides

.pdf/a

 

.pdf

References

Library of Congress. (2023). Library of Congress Recommended Formats for Textual Works. https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/text.html

Library of Congress. (2023). Library of Congress Recommended Formats Statement (Table of Contents). https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/TOC.html

Qualitative Data Repository. (2023). Formatting Data. https://qdr.syr.edu/guidance/managing/formatting-data

 

CC-BY-NC

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

 

RDM Guidance formatting was influenced by The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Tips & Tools handouts.