Are there specific data types or formats that ICPSR accepts and/or releases?

Data Deposit Formats

ICPSR accepts a wide range of data types and formats. Required deposit file formats are defined in the data submission requirements.

Some archives within ICPSR may have different preferred file formats depending on their data types or disciplinary standards. Some deposits may include CSV or JSON files, which are commonly used by researchers working in programming environments such as Python or R. These formats may be acceptable for deposit. Datasets in other formats (images, videos, etc) are accepted as well in accordance with ICPSR’s Collection Development Policy. Depositors are encouraged to review the guidance for their specific archive or contact [email protected] with questions, including non-standard formats.

ICPSR Data Release Formats

ICPSR makes quantitative data files available in several widely used formats, including SAS, SPSS, Stata, R, and tab-delimited text files. When possible, ICPSR makes qualitative files available in PDF, plain text (.txt), or rich text (.rtf) formats.