Standards and Formats

Basic principles

CLARIN adheres to the following principles:

• Open standards are preferred over proprietary standards
• Formats and protocols should be:
  • well-documented
  • verifiable
  • proven (being used in practice)
• Text-based formats are (where possible) preferred over binary formats
• In the case of digitisation of an analogue signal, using no or lossless compression is recommended

Learning more

• FAQ about recommended formats and standards
• Document: Standards for LRT
• the CLARIN Standards Committee

Relevant formats

Several CLARIN centres have published excellent guidance on formats suitable to deposit language research data:

• ​BAS formats
• COCOON formats
• ​UdS formats
• ​HZSK formats
• ​TLA formats
• ​AGD@IDS formats
• ​ACDH/ARCHE formats
• ORTOLANG formats

Relevant standards

The table below contains a (non-exhaustive) list of standards that are relevant for the CLARIN community.

Source: CLARIN standard guidance website (provided by the IDS)

Abbreviation/Name	Topic(s)	Standard body	CLARIN centre(s)
CES	Generic Corpus Annotation	EAGLES
CHAT	File Formats | Transcription	Other
CMDI	Metadata	ISO	CLARIN-PL, IDS, MPI-PL, UC
Controlled Vocabulary	Controlled Vocabulary | Knowledge Representation | Thesaurus	NISO	CLARIN-PL, MPI-PL
CQLF	Query	ISO	IDS
DCAM	Metadata	DCMI
DCMES	Metadata	DCMI	MPI-PL
DCR	Data Categorization	ISO	CLARIN-PL, IDS, MPI-PL
DiAML	Markup Language | Semantic Annotation	ISO
DictionaryEntry-RePresentation	Controlled Vocabulary | Terminology	ISO
DITA	Generic Corpus Annotation	OASIS
DOL	Knowledge Representation | Ontology	ISO
DSSSL	Formatting | Transformation	ISO
Feature structures	Feature Structure	ISO	CLARIN-PL
GOLD	Ontology | Terminology	GOLD Community
HTML	Meta Language	ISO	CLARIN-PL, IDS, MPI-PL
HyTime	Markup Language	ISO
IMDI	Metadata	Other	CLARIN-PL, MPI-PL, UC
ISBD	Metadata	IFLA
ISO-Thesauri	Controlled Vocabulary | Thesaurus	ISO
ITS	Data Categorization	W3C
JATS	Generic Corpus Annotation	NISO
LAF	Generic Corpus Annotation	ISO	CLARIN-PL
LMF	Lexical Knowledge	ISO	CLARIN-PL, MPI-PL, UC
MAF	Morpho-syntactic Annotation	ISO
METS	Metadata	LoC
MLIF	Multilingual data annotation	ISO	CLARIN-PL
Multilingual Thesaurus	Controlled Vocabulary | Thesaurus	IFLA
NISO MIX	Metadata | Schema	LoC
NLM JAITS	Generic Corpus Annotation	Other
OLAC Metadata	Metadata	OLAC	CLARIN-PL, MPI-PL, UC
OLiA	Ontology | Terminology
OntoIOp	Knowledge Representation | Ontology	ISO
OWL	Knowledge Representation | Ontology	W3C	UC
PDF/A	File Formats	ISO
PISA	Terminology	ISO	IDS, MPI-PL
RDF	Knowledge Representation | Metadata	W3C	CLARIN-PL, IDS, UC
RDF/XML	Meta Language | Serialization	W3C	CLARIN-PL
RDFS	Constraint Language | Schema	W3C
RELAX NG	Constraint Language	ISO	MPI-PL, UC
RTF	File Formats	Other
SemAF	Semantic Annotation	ISO
SemRoleML	Markup Language | Semantic Annotation	ISO
SGML	Meta Language	ISO
SimpL-1	Terminology	ISO
SKOS	Knowledge Representation | Thesaurus	W3C
SPARQL	Query	W3C
SRX	Segmentation	LISA	CLARIN-PL
Structured Vocabulary	Controlled Vocabulary | Knowledge Representation | Thesaurus	BSi	CLARIN-PL
SynAF	Syntactic Annotation	ISO
TBX	File Formats | Markup Language | Terminology	ISO
TEI Guidelines	Generic Corpus Annotation | Markup Language	TEI	CLARIN-PL, MPI-PL, UC
TextMD	Metadata	LoC
TimeML	Markup Language | Semantic Annotation	ISO	CLARIN-PL
TMF	Data Categorization	ISO
TMS	Data Categorization | Terminology	ISO
TMX	File Formats | Markup Language	LISA
Topic Maps	Knowledge Representation	ISO
Turtle	Serialization	W3C
WordSeg	Generic Corpus Annotation | Segmentation	ISO
XCES	Generic Corpus Annotation	EAGLES	CLARIN-PL, IDS
XHTML	Meta Language	ISO	CLARIN-PL, IDS
XML	Meta Language	W3C	CLARIN-PL, MPI-PL, UC
XMLNS	Meta Language	W3C	IDS, MPI-PL
XPath	Markup Language | Transformation	W3C	CLARIN-PL, IDS, MPI-PL, UC
XQuery	Markup Language | Query	W3C	IDS, MPI-PL, UC
XSD	Constraint Language	W3C	IDS, MPI-PL
XSL-FO	Formatting	W3C	MPI-PL
XSLT	Transformation	W3C	CLARIN-PL, MPI-PL, UC