We recommend preparing data files in formats that are independent of software and computer platforms. Only for recommended file formats, we can assure long-term storage and access in the ADP.

At the point of ingest (receiving the submitted materials from the depositor) the ADP checks the submitted data formats and, if needed, either transforms them into appropriate formats or asks the depositor to submit the materials in our recommended file formats.

Type of Material	Recommended Formats	Other Formats
Structured text files (Study Description Form, Questionnaire, Codebook etc.)	Structured metadata description of the questionnaire (*.xml), according to the DDI or CAI software (*.bmi)  *.rtf or outer textual format (*.doc, *.txt, etc.)	Printed version of the material  *.pdf or other graphic format
Structured numeric data (Data file)	SPSS (*.por, *.sav) ASCI (*.txt metric or a data file, equipped with labels + computer-readable description of the data file with the names and categories of variables)	Other statistical packages (e.g. STATA, R, Microsoft Excel) Tables (*.xls etc.)  Databases
Freely formulated textual materials for tracking original documentation (Questionnaire, Instructions for Interviewers, Address to Respondents, copies of research reports)	*.pdf or another graphic format + printed version	*.rtf or other textual format (*.doc, *.txt, etc.)
Textual data	Rich Text Format (.rtf) plain text, ASCII (.txt) eXtensible Mark-up Language (.xml) text according to an appropriate Document Type Definition (DTD) or schema	Hypertext Mark-up Language (.html) Common formats: MS Word (.doc/.docx) OpenDocument Text (.odt) Software specific formats: NUD*IST, Nvivo, ATLAS.ti in MAXQDA
Still image	TIFF 6.0 uncompressed (*.tif)	PEG (*.jpeg, *.jpg, .*jp2), GIF (*.gif), TIFF other versions (*.tif, *.tiff), RAW image format (*.raw), Photoshop files (*.psd), BMP (*.bmp), PNG (*.png), Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF/A, PDF) (*.pdf)