TU Berlin, University Library: Guidelines for PDF files (November 2022)
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(2) PDF/A
PDF/A is an ISO standard (ISO 19005-1 or 19005-2) specialized for use in archiving and
to ensure the long-term digital preservation of documents. A PDF/A-compliant
document can visually reproduce the content in the same way on different computers
with different operating systems and in different printing environments.
Submission as PDF/A-2a is recommended; the following variants are also accepted:
PDF/A-2b, PDF/A-2u, PDF/A-1b or PDF/A-1a (PDF/A-3 is currently not accepted.)
• PDF/A-1b and PDF/A-2b (Level B, “Basic”) provide reliable visual reproducibility;
they ensure the minimum requirements for an archivable document.
• PDF/A-1a und PDF/A-2a (Level A, “Accessible”), besides reliable visual
reproducibility, ensure character mappings to Unicode and a hierarchical
document structure and tagging.
Free and proprietary tools are available for creating, editing and validating PDF/A-
compliant files. Some, but not all, word processing applications offer direct export in
PDF/A format.
→ Notes on creating a PDF with LaTeX | Word | Libre Office
→ Notes on PDF/A validation (checking standard compliance)
If you convert a PDF file (retrospectively) into PDF/A format: Please note that every
conversion can produce errors. Therefore, please carefully check the file you converted
to PDF/A: Are figures/graphs, formulas and special characters (e. g. umlauts, diacritics)
reproduced correctly? Can the text be copied without errors?
→ Notes on converting to PDF/A