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Polyglot is intended to be a universal and scalable file format converter. Data preservation and curation is an extremely difficult problem faced by many within the scientific community. One of the most difficult issues faced by those hoping to preserve data is that over time the file formats used to store important scientific data may become unreadable. This is a significant problem in the scientific community, as preservation of data is necessary to ensure reproducible science. A significant problem addressed by Polyglot is that there exist a multitude of different file formats that represent the same data (e.g. .mp3, .flac, .wav for audio) as well as numerous different software programs to view utilize that data. This diminishes the lifespan of that data, as the software available to utilize the files can become unsupported by the creator, or it may be the case that it is not supported by software that functions on the user's current system. It can also be the case that the software required to read a particular file format is unavailable to a particular user due to lack of access to the relevant program or licensing issues. When this occurs accessing data stored in these file formats requires the user to find a different program to read the files, or in many cases to convert the data to a different file format that is usable by some other program. In addition to this, some proprietary file formats may be unreadable to those who might benefit from the data if access to the appropriate software is not available. Again, in this case the user is forced to find a different program to read the files, or to convert them to a different format. Polyglot seeks to allow the user to convert from any file format to one that is supported by the software available to the user. In this way, Polyglot preserves data, allowing data that might otherwise become unusable to persist over time.
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