Interoperable CSV for Environmental Data Archival and Exchange: iCSV

Environmental research relies on seamless data exchange between institutions globally, but inadequate documentation and complex formats hinder collaboration. We introduce interoperable CSV (iCSV), a self-describing, human-readable format that combines the simplicity of Comma-Separated Values (CSV) with the metadata richness of NetCDF(Network Common Data Format)/CF (Climate and Forecast). iCSV ensures long-term interpretability, interoperability, and user accessibility, addressing key challenges in environmental data stewardship. By embedding structured metadata directly in a human-readable text file, iCSV enables automated validation, supports FAIR principles, and lowers the barrier to data sharing and reuse while ensuring data remains interpretable for future users and maintaining broad compatibility with existing software. This work motivates the need for a simple, self-describing tabular format for environmental time series, presents the iCSV specification, positions it within existing binary and human-readable format ecosystems through comparative analysis, and discusses current limitations with directions for future improvements.