Scientific Data formats

See also Health and Medicine for medical/biomedical data formats, and also see Engineering.

General

• Common Data Format (CDF)
• EAS3 (binary file format for structured data)
• HDF (Hierarchical Data Format, originally from NCSA, now maintained by The HDF Group)
  • HDF4
  • HDF5
• IGOR (.ibw)
• NRRD (Nearly Raw Raster Data -- a simple format for n-dimensional raster data)
• NetCDF (Network Common Data Format)
• ROOT (CERN data-analysis package and related formats, used in their Open Data initiative)
• SDXF (Structured Data Exchange Format)
• Silo (a storage format for visualization developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
• Simple Data format (SDF) By George H. Fisher, Space Sciences Lab, UC Berkeley (A platform-independent, precision-preserving binary data I/O format capable of handling large, multi-dimensional arrays)
• Standard Delay Format (SDF) A standard data structure for timing data
• XDF (Extensible Data Format) [1]
• XSIL (Extensible Scientific Interchange Language)

Astronomical and Space

• Advanced Scientific Data Format
• CPA (PRISM)
• Flexible Image Transport System (FITS)
  • PSRFITS (Pulsar data storage standard)
• ICER
• NASA Raster Metafile
• ODL (NASA Object Description Language)
• PDS (Planetary Data System)
• PDS4
• VOTable (IVOA standard table format)
• SBIG CCDOPS image
• Standard Archive Format (used for USAF missile data)
• SDF (Starlink Data Format) and NDF (Starlink's Extensible N-Dimensional Data Format).
• VICAR
• WinMiPS

Biological

• 23andMe
• AB1 (Chromatogram files used by DNA sequencing instruments from Applied Biosystems)
• ABCD (Access to Biological Collection Data)
• ABCDDNA (Access to Biological Collection Data DNA extension)
• ABCDEFG (Access to Biological Collection Data Extension For Geosciences)
• ACE (Sequence assembly format)
• Affymetrix Raw Intensity Format
• ARF (Axon Raw Format)
• ARLEQUIN Project Format
• Axt Alignment Format
• BAM (Binary compressed SAM format)
• BED (Browser extensible display format describing genes and other features of DNA sequences)
• BEDgraph
• Big Browser Extensible Data Format
• Big Wiggle Format
• Binary Alignement Map Format
• Binary Probe Map Format
• Binary sequence information Format
• Biological Pathway eXchange
• BLAT alignment Format
• BRIX generated O Format
• CAF (Common Assembly Format for sequence assembly)
• CASTEP
• CellML
• CHADO XML interchange Format
• Chain Format for pairwise alignment
• CHARMM Card File Format
• CLUSTAL-W Alignment Format
• CLUSTAL-W Dendrogram Guide File Format
• Clustered Data Table Format
• Complete Genomics
• CRAM
• DELTA (DEscription Language for TAxonomy)
• DAS (Distributed Sequence Annotation System)
• DBN (Dot Bracket Notation (DBN) - Vienna Format)
• EMBL (Flatfile format used by the EMBL for nucleotide and peptide sequences)
• EML (Environmental Markup Language) not to be confused with EML (Ecological Metadata Language)
• ENCODE (Peak information Format)
• FASTA and FASTQ (File format for sequence data, FASTQ with quality)
• FAST5 (.fast5)
• FuGEFlow
• FuGE-ML (Functional Genomics Experiment Markup Language)
• Gating-ML
• GCDML (Genomic Contextual Data Markup Language)
• GelML Gel electrophoresis Markup Language
• GenBank (Flatfile format used by NCBI for nucleotide and peptide sequences)
• Gene Feature File (Versions 1 and 3)
• GFF (General feature format for describing genes and other features of DNA, RNA and protein sequences)
• Gene Prediction File Format
• GenePattern GeneSet Table Format
• Genome Annotation File (version 1 and 2)
• GTF (Gene transfer format holds information about gene structure)
• HMMER
• ICB (ICM binary file Format)
• Image Cytometry Experiment (ICE)
• Image Cytometry Standard (ICS)
• imzML (imaging mz Markup Language)
• ISA-Tab (Investigation Study Assay Tabular)
• ISND sequence record XML
• KGML (KEGG Mark-up Language)
• MAGE-Tab (MicroArray Gene Expression Tabular)
• MCL (Microbiological Common Language)
• MIARE-TAB (Minimum Information About a RNAi Experiment Tabular)
• microarray track data Browser Extensible Data Format
• MINiML (MIAME Notation in Markup Language)
• mini Protein Data Bank Format
• MIQAS-TAB (Minimal Information for QTLs and Association Studies Tabular)
• MITAB
• mmCIF (macromolecular Crystallographic Information File)
• Multiple Alignment Forma
• mzData (deprecated)
• mzIdentML
• mzML
• mzQuantML
• mzXML (deprecated)
• NCD (Natural Collections Descriptions)
• NDTF (Neurophysiology Data Translation Format)
• net alignment annotation Format
• NeuroML (Neuroscience eXtensible Markup Language)
• New Hampshire eXtended Format
• Newick tree Format
• NEXUS (Encodes mixed information about genetic sequence data in a block structured format)
• Nimblegen Design File Format
• Nimblegen Gene Data Format
• NMR-STAR (NMR Self-defining Text Archive and Retrieval format)
• nucleotide inFormation binary Format
• ODM (Operational Data Model)
• Open Biomedical Ontology Flat File Format
• Personal Genome SNP Format
• PHD (Output from the basecalling software Phred)
• phyloXML (XML for evolutionary biology and comparative genomics)
• Pre-Clustering File Format
• Protein Data Bank (PDB; Structures of biomolecules deposited in Protein Data Bank)
• Protein InFormation Resource Format
• PRM (Protocol Representation Model (Medical Research))
• PSI-MI XML
• PSI-PAR
• RDML (Real-time PCR Data Markup Language)
• SAM (Sequence Alignment/Map format)
• SCF (Staden chromatogram files used to store data from DNA sequencing)
• SBML (Systems Biology Markup Language used to store biochemical network computational models)
• SDD (Structured Descriptive Data)
• SED-ML (Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language)
• SOFT (Simple Omnibus Format in Text)
• spML (Separation Markup Language)
• SRA-XML (Short Read Archive eXtensible Markup Language)
• Standard Flowgram Format
• Stockholm Multiple Alignment Format (Representing multiple sequence alignments)
• SBML (System Biology Markup Language)
• SBGN (Systems Biology Graphical Notation)
• SBRML (Systems Biology Results Markup Language)
• Swiss-Prot (Flatfile format used for protein sequences from the Swiss-Prot database)
• TAIR annotation data Format
• TAPIR (TDWG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval)
• TCS (Taxonomic Concept transfer Schema)
• TraML (Transition Markup Language)
• UniProtKB XML Format
• VCF (Variant Call Format)
• Wiggle Format

Chemical

• CCP4 (X-ray crystallography voxels (electron density))
• CDX (ChemDraw file format)
• CDXML (ChemDraw file format)
• CHM (ChemDraw file format)
• CIF (Crystallographic Information File, standardised by IUCr)
• CML (Chemical markup language)
• CTab (Chemical table file .mol, .sd, .sdf)
• HITRAN (spectroscopic data with one optical/infrared transition per line in the ASCII file (.hit))
• JCAMP (Joint Committee on Atomic and Molecular Physical Data, .dx, .jdx)
• MOL (MDL Molfile)
• MOP (MOPAC format)
• MRC (voxels in cryo-electron microscopy)
• MST ACD/ChemSketch v1 file format
• Protein Data Bank (PDB)
• RPT (OpenLynx) Waters OpenLynx reports
• RXN (Reaction file format)
• SK2 (ACD/ChemSketch v2 file format)
• SKC (ISIS/Draw file format)
• SMILES (Simplified molecular input line entry specification, .smi)
• SPC (Spectroscopic Data)
• Structure Data File (SDF)
• TGF (ISIS/Draw reaction file format)
• XYZ Chem Wiki

Chemical data may be distinguished in various ways, including Chemical MIME types.

Earth Sciences

• Adaptable Seismic Data Format
• Network-Day Tape
• QuakeML
• SEED
• SEG-D (formats, mostly tape based, for seismic data)
• SEG Y (Reflection seismology data format)
• SEIS-PROV
• StationXML

Ecological

• Darwin Core (Standard for sharing information about biological diversity)
• Electronic Data Deliverable (EDD; EPA Superfund)
• EML (Ecological Metadata Language), not to be confused with EML (Environmental Markup Language)

Environmental

• HYT (AquiferTest)

Geographic and Geospatial

See also Geospatial

• DEM (Digital Elevation Model)
• DOQ (Digital Orthophotos)
• e00 (ESRI ArcInfo Interchange File)
• FGDC (Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata??)
• GeoTIFF (Geospatial extensions to TIFF)
• GML (Geography Markup Language)
• HDFEOS, HD2, HD4 (Hierarchical Data Format-Earth Observing System)
• KML (KML (formerly Keyhole Markup Language), Version 2.2)
• NDF (National Landsat Archive Production System (NLAPS) Data Format)
• SAIF (Spatial Archive and Interchange Format, Canadian)
• SDTS (Spatial Data Transfer Standard)
• Shapefile (ESRI, shp/shx)
• MrSID (MrSID- Multi-resolution Seamless Image Database)
• TAB (MapInfo dataset format, must have component)

Mathematical

• AsciiMath
• DOT (graph description language)
• GEXF (Graph Exchange XML Format)
• graph6, sparse6 (ASCII encoding of Adjacency matrices (.g6, .s6))
• graphML (Graph Markup Language)
• JMP (.jmp)
• KaleidaGraph (.qda, .qdc)
• Life 1.05
• Life 1.06
• MacWavelets
• Mathematica
  • Computable Document Format (.cdf)
  • Mathematica notebook (.nb, .nbp)
  • Mathematica package file (M)
  • Wolfram Language
• Macrocell
• MCell
• MathML
• MATLAB
  • MAT (MATLAB data format)
  • Matlab figure
  • MATLAB script file (m)
  • Matlab Model (.mdl, .slx)
• Minitab (.mtw, .mpj)
• NPY and NPZ (NumPy)
• OPJ (Origin data format)
• PDL (Perl Data Language)
• Plaintext (cellular automata)
• RLE (cellular automata)
• Rule (Golly)
• Small Object Format
• Statistica
  • CSS Software (Complete Statistical System)
  • CSS STATISTICA
• WP2 WinPlot

Microscopy

• Amber ARR Bitmap Image
• Aperio SVS
• Bio
• BioRad confocal image
• DeltaVision
• DM2 (Gatan Digital Micrograph 2)
• DM3 (Gatan Digital Micrograph 3)
• DM4 (Gatan Digital Micrograph 4)
• GATAN
• HMSA (.msa)
• Image Cytometry Experiment (ICE)
• Image Cytometry Standard (ICS)
• KONTRON
• LIFF (Openlab Layered Image File Format)
• LSM (Zeiss Light Speed Microscope)
• MetaMorph Stack (.stk)
• MRC (Medical Research Council)
• OME-TIFF (Open Microscopy Imaging format)
• OME-XML (Open Microscopy Imaging format)
• SMV
• VGS-8
• Zeiss BIVAS

Neutron and X-ray Scattering

• canSAS (tools for small-angle scattering)
• CIF (Crystallographic Information File, standardised by IUCr)
• NeXus (NeXus is a common data format for neutron, x-ray, and muon science)

Oceanographic, Atmospheric and Meteorological

• GRIB (Gridded Binary)
• BUFR (Binary Universal Format Representation)
• IOAPI (netCDF augmented with metadata from the I/O API)
• Meteosat data
• PP (UK Met Office format for weather model data)

Physics

See subcategory Physics data

Scientific Signal data

• ACQ (AcqKnowledge File Format for Windows)
• BioSemi (BDF) data format
• BKR (EEG data format)
• CFWB (Chart Data File Format)
• EDF (European data format)
• FEF (File Exchange Format for Vital signs)
• General Data Format for Biosignals (GDF)
• GMS (Gesture And Motion Signal format)
• IROCK (intelliRock Sensor Data File Format)
• MFER (Medical waveform Format Encoding Rules)
• REC (ATI Vision recorder file)
• SCP-ECG (Standard Communication Protocol for Computer assisted electrocardiography)
• SIGIF (SIGnal Interchange Format)

Social Sciences

• Atlas.ti (Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis package)
• DDI (Data Documentation Initiative)
• DO ("DO file" command script for the Stata Statistical package)
• DTA (Binary data file for the Stata Statistical package)
• Linguistic Annotation Framework (LAF; used by computational linguists to annotate language samples)
• M2k (MAXQDA)
• NVivo (Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis package)
• R (Statistical package)
• SAS (Statistical package)
  • SAS Transport File (.xpt)
• SAV (Binary "SPSS data format" for the SPSS Statistical package)
• SPO (Output file for the SPSS Statistical package - version 14)
• SPS ("Syntax file" (plain text command script) for the SPSS Statistical package)
• SPV (Output file for the SPSS Statistical package - version 17 and later)
• Transana (Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis package)

Spectra

• Bruker (XRF software, .pdz)
• Niton (XRF software, .ndt)
• EDAX Spectrum (.spc)
• Thermo Scientific SPC (.spc)
• EMSA/MAS
• HMSA Hyper-Dimensional Data

Miscellaneous

• AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language)
• EMD-DF64 (used for high frequency energy monitoring)
• IES (IESNA LM-63 Photometric Data File)
• Jupyter Notebook (.ipynb)

Links

• Improving on “Access to Research”
• WikiBooks:Software Tools For Molecular Microscopy