"The DMP should describe data formats, media, and dissemination approaches that will be used to make data and metadata available to others."
Please note that these DMP excerpts are copyrighted by their respective authors.
Preferred:
“Verilog, SPICE, and MATLAB files generated will be processed and submitted to FTP servers as .mat files with TXT documentation. The data will be distributed in several widely used formats, including ASCII, tab-delimited (for use with Excel), and MAT format. Instructional material and relevant technical reports will be provided as PDF. Digital video data files generated will be processed and submitted to the FTP servers in MPEG-4 (.mp4) and .avi formats. Variables will use a standardized naming convention consisting of a prefix, root, suffix system.”
“Plasma image data will be RGB colored JPG or TIFF format with resolution determined by the camera. Video data will be RGB colored AVI format.”
These examples illustrate a preference for non-proprietary data formats based on open standards.
Less Developed:
“The data format includes digital data recorded by computers and instruments and metadata recorded in lab notebooks and reports.”
This answer is too vague to be informative.
Describe the formats (file types) your data will be in. Proprietary formats are more difficult to preserve, as the software and hardware that reads them quickly becomes obsolete. Data should be stored in stable, non-proprietary formats, preferably those based on open and published standards, whenever possible. If your research will generate files in proprietary formats, consider converting those files into formats based on open standards for sharing and archival purposes.
Current DMP guidelines are not specific about metadata requirements.
A metadata record is a file that captures all details about a data set that another researcher would need to make use of the data set in a separate or related line of inquiry. Metadata captures the who, what, when, where, why and how of the data you produce. When data curators talk about metadata they are normally referring to a machine-readable description tha comes in a standardized format, often defined by an XML schema.