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.
Manuals, fact sheets
Wiki Research data management and digital curationRelated Links
News
Swiss Open Academic Data Day (SOAD)
On 10 September 2025, researchers, data scientists and practitioners from all over Switzerland will meet to explore the potential and challenges of Open Academic Data.
Building Community Infrastructure for Collaborative Metadata Enrichment
On 10 September 2025, the ETH Library invites you to the sixth SYoS Lecture at ETH Zurich. Juan Pablo Alperin will speak on open metadata and collaborative research infrastructures.
SNSF project approved? The ETH Library helps with the data management plan
Has the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) accepted your project for funding? Then you need a Data Management Plan (DMP) now so the funds can be released.