Not all software lasts forever. Therefore, it's worthwhile to consider the following:
- If you have data in a format that can only be read by one software, what happens when that software is no longer available?
- If you have to pay for that software – then anyone who wants to use your data must pay for that software, too.
- What happens when the format is no longer used?
To solve these problems, use standard formats that will be around for a long time. Generally, the best formats are open standard and have good support in open-source software and multiple independent software suites. Recommended file formats are presented in the following table.
| Text format | File extension |
| Acrobat PDF/A | |
| Comma-Separated Values | .csv |
| Open Office Formats | .odt, .ods, .odp |
| Plain Text (US-ASCII, UTF-8) | .txt |
| XML | .xml |
| Image / Graphic formats | File extension |
| JPEG | .jpg |
| JPEG2000 | .jp2 |
| PNG | .png |
| SVG 1.1 (no java binding) | .svg |
| TIFF | .tif, .tiff |
| Audio formats | File extension |
| AIFF | .aif, .aiff |
| WAVE | .wav |
| Motion formats | File extension |
| AVI (uncompressed) | .avi |
| Motion JPEG2000 | .mj2, .mjp2 |
See best practices for file formats from Stanford University Library.
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