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Manara - Qatar Research Repository (English): File Formats accepted on Manara

This guide provides all the necessary information needed for a researcher when interacting with the Qatar National Open Research Repository (Manara)

File Formats

What file formats are accepted for deposit on Manara? 

Manara Repository accepts a variety of electronic file formats. Selecting the appropriate format is crucial for effective data management, seamless file sharing and long-term digital preservation. 

Where possible, ensure your files are in open file format. If you need to submit proprietary file formats, additional information is required. Include file format details in the metadata or in instructions submitted as part of the content (e.g., specify the file format and compatible software for opening it). If the content can be converted to a PDF without losing any information (especially for research papers, books, posters, presentations without multimedia, etc.) and has been officially published, a PDF version is required from the researcher to be added as an optional additional file. 

Compressed archives for example, Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) or other compressed archive formats are accepted under the following conditions: 

a) Submit compressed file in lossless data compression format with no encryption, password or other protection mechanisms, 

b) Compressed archives containing a single file: ZIP is accepted if the compression rate is high and the decompressed file is larger than 100 MB. If the decompressed file is smaller than 100 MB or the compression rate is low, replace the ZIP with the decompressed file, 

c) Compressed archive containing multiple files: Software package and associated assets. 

 

Manara file format guidelines follow the Recommended Format Statements from the Library of Congress. For more detailed information, please visit Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections. 

 

File Formats Descriptions: 

Type of Data 

Preferred Formats 

Accepted Formats 

Audio files 

  • Wavefrom Audio (WAVE) 

  • Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) 

  • Moving Picture Experts Group Layer 3 Audio Encoding (MPEG-3) 

  • Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) 

Databases 

  • Structured Query Language (SQL) 

  • Comma-Separated Values (CSV) 

  • JavaScript Object Notation  (JSON) 

  • eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) DTD/schema, XSD/XSL presentation style sheets and defined started character encoding 

  • Tab-Separated Values (TSV) 

  • SQLite Database File Format (SQLITE) 

  • Microsoft SQL Server Database File (MDF) 

  • Microsoft SQL Server log File (LDR) 

  • MySQL Table Definition Format (FRM) 

  

Ebooks 

  

  • Electronic Publication (EPUB) 

  

  • Portable Document Format (PDF, PDF/A, PDF/UA-1, PDF/X-3) 

  • Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) 

Geospatial Data 

  

  • Geo-referenced TIFF (TIFF) 

  • Keyhole Markup Language (KML) 

  

  • Geography Markup Language (GML) 

  • ESRI Shapefile (SHP) 

  • Network Common Data Format (NCDF) 

Image files 

  

  • Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) 

  

  • Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) 

  • Joint Photographic Experts group (JPEG) 

  • Joint Photographic Experts group (JPEG 2000) and (JPEG 2000 Extended) 

  • Portable Network Graphics (PNG) 

  • PowerPoint Presentation (PPT) 

  • Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 

  • Bitmap Image File (BMP) 

  • Portable Document Format (PDF, PDF/A, PDF/UA-1, PDF/X-3) 

  • Camera Raw Formats: 

  • Nikon Electronic Format (NEF), 

  • Canon Raw Image File (CRW, CR2), 

  • Sony Alpha Raw (ARW),  

  • Image Information Quality (IIQ). 

  • Adobe Photoshop (PSD) 

  • Adobe Illustrator (AI) 

Metadata files 

  

  • Xtensible Mark-up Language (XML) DTD/schema, XSD/XSL presentation style sheets and defined started character encoding 

  • Comma Separated Values (CSV) 

  • OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODS) 

  • Microsoft Excel (MS-XLSX) 

  

Research Data (e.g. Quantitative tabular data) 

  • Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) 

  • Tape Archive (TAR) 

  • Comma Separated Values (CSV) 

  

  • OpenDocument Spreadsheet (ODB) 

  • Microsoft Excel (MS-XLSX, MS-LSX) 

  • Tab-separated tables (TSV) 

  • OpenDocument Database (ODB) 

Software 

  

  • Interactive Python Notebook (Jupyter) 

  • Python notebook file (ipynb)

Text files 

  

  • Plain text (TXT) 

  • Portable Document Format (PDF, PDF/A, PDF/UA-1, PDF/X-3) 

  • Xtensible Mark-up Language (XML) DTD/schema, XSD/XSL presentation style sheets and defined started character encoding 

  • Microsoft Excel (MS-XLSX, MS-LSX) 

  • Microsoft Word (MS-DOCX, MS-DOC) 

  • Rich text Format (RTF) 

  • LaTeX documents (LaTeX) 

  • Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) 

  • OpenDocument Format (ODF) 

  

Video files 

  

  • Moving Picture Experts Group Layer 4 (MPEG-4) 

  

  • Moving Picture Experts Group Layer 2 (MPEG-2) 

  • Motion JPEG 2000 

  • Material Exchange Format (MXF) 

  • QuickTime File Format (MOV) 

  • Audio Visual Interleave (AVI) 

Web Archive 

  

  • WebARChive (WARC) 

  

  • Internet Archive (ARC_IA) 

  • Internet Archive Index (CDX) 

  • Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions HTML (MHTML, MIME HTML) 

  • Web Page Saved as HTML: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) 

  • Heritrix (ARC) 

Web Data 

  

  • Javascript Object Notation (JSON) 

  • Xtensible Mark-up Language (XML) DTD/schema, XSD/XSL presentation style sheets and defined started character encoding 

  • Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)