Dear Joe, I'd choose a plain text format. They can be read and parsed with a very wide range of software. That is IMHO a much more important factor for long term archivation that file size or the ease to read it with specific software.
The choice between tab-delimited, comma separated values, XML, JSON, ... will depend upon the data (and the metadata). Best regards, ir. Thierry Onkelinx Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and Forest team Biometrie & Kwaliteitszorg / team Biometrics & Quality Assurance Kliniekstraat 25 1070 Anderlecht Belgium To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data. ~ John Tukey 2017-03-29 10:44 GMT+02:00 Joe Gain <joe.g...@uni-konstanz.de>: > Hello, > > we are collecting information on the subject of research data management in > German on the webplatform: > > www.forschungsdaten.info > > One of the topics, which we are writing about, is how to *archive* data. > Unfortunately, none of us in the project is an expert with respect to R and > so I would like to ask the list, what they recommend? A related question is > to do with the sharing of data. We have already asked some academics, who > have basically replied that they don't really know other than to strongly > recommend a plain text format. > > We would also like to know, if members of the list recommend converting > formats from commercial software such as S-Plus, Terr, SPSS etc. to an > R-compatible format for long term archivation? Are there any general rules > and best practices, when it comes to archiving (and sharing) statistical > data and statistical programs? > > Any comments would be much appreciated! > Joe > > -- > B 1003 > Kommunikations-, Informations-, Medienzentrum (KIM) > Universitaet Konstanz > > t: ++49-7531-883234 > e: joe.g...@uni-konstanz.de > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.