PANGAEA is a publisher and library for geo-referenced data from earth system research. Observational and analytical data files are archived with a description (metadata) in a relational database. Its content is distributed via web services to portals, search engines and catalogs of libraries and publishers. Data is retrievable through a search engine and a data warehouse. Each data set includes a bibliographic citation and is persistently identified using a DOI. Pangaea is unique in archiving its content in a structured order with a high level of internal consistency. Pangaea offers service and curation for the data output of projects, institutes and individual scientists. Data can be archived as an independent publication or as a supplement related to an article. Data are in Open Access and are placed under a Creative Commons license. see also http://wiki.pangaea.de.