Open Formats

Sharing data can be greatly enhanced if you use ubiquitous, easy-to-read formats. For instance, while Microsoft Excel files are commonplace, it’s better to export these spreadsheets to Comma Separated Values (CSV) text files, which can be read on any computer without having Microsoft products installed. Open data means that anyone can read it without the need for costly software.

For image files, use common formats like PNG, JPEG, TIFF, etc. Most browsers can handle these. If you use specialized software to create your data, try to save you data in well-known formats. For instance, GIS data can be exported to ESRI shapefiles, and data created in Matlab or other matrix-based programs can be exported as NetCDF (an open binary format). Some common open formats are listed below.

Containers: TAR, GZIP, ZIP
Databases: XML, CSV, JSON
Geospatial: SHP, DBF, GeoTIFF, NetCDF
Video: MPEG, AVI, MXF, MKV
Sounds: WAVE, AIFF, MP3, MXF, FLAC
Statistics: DTA, POR, SAS, SAV
Images: TIFF, JPEG 2000, PDF, PNG, GIF, BMP, SVG
Tabular data: CSV, TSV, TXT
Text: XML, PDF, HTML, JSON, TXT, RTF
Web archive: WARC