Digital long-term preservation
With digital long-term preservation, we take on the task of ensuring the preservation of digital information over the long term and safeguarding its usability for researchers through adequate measures both now and in the future.
What is digital curation?
Digital curation addresses the entire life cycle of digital data, from their creation in the scientific work process to their processing, documentation and publication, all the way through to sustainable data maintenance in the digital archive.
Challenges for data curation
Digital curation and long-term preservation have special significance for the handling of research data because:
- The production of digital data is constantly increasing.
- At the same time, the development cycles of hardware and software are getting shorter.
- Data storage media get old.
- File formats become obsolete.
- The various data requirements are changing on an ongoing basis.
Prudent data management and careful planning of preservation measures are therefore important for ensuring that digital information and documents remain accessible for research also in future.
Digitised holdings
The content of our digital collections and archives must also be safeguarded for the long term. The ETH Data Archive offers the appropriate solution for ensuring this.
Contact
Manuals, fact sheets
Wiki Research data management and digital curationRelated Links
News
Where is the data?
Under this motto, the ETH Library and Scientific IT Services will be celebrating their love for data from 9 to 13 February 2026 and jointly providing insight into research data management.
ETH Summer School: Learn how to manage research data professionally
Join the ETH RDM Summer School 2026 to master effective data management and enhance the quality, transparency, and impact of your research.
Fit in research data management
Get yourself and your research project in shape with our research data management workshop programms. You can now register for the Spring Semester 2026 workshops.