Preserving data for future use involves the acquisition, processing, preservation, quality assurance or control (QC) or assurance, archival preservation (including accompanying platform and instrumental metadata), and dissemination by data centres serving national and international users [1]. Many organizations, both national and international have a primary objective to assemble, preserve into the future and disseminate measurements from the ocean and the overlying atmosphere. The few that are mentioned illustrate the common objectives and issues of all. This paper is a companion to other papers [2,3,4] that cover the scope of ocean data management. This one deals with the processes of moving data from acquisition to archives and leaves the other aspects of data management to the other authors (other than touching briefly on issues related to timely delivery).