Data preservation is essential for present and future experimental facilities, enabling cost-effective fundamental research by leveraging unique data sets as theoretical and experimental understanding advances. This contribution summarizes the status of data preservation in high energy physics from a perspective of 15 years of experience with a structured collaborative effort at international level. There is clear evidence that the data preservation enhances the scientific output of experiments
during and after data acquisition, improves computational efficiency and strengthens the scientific activity. Lessons from past experiments and recent developments will be presented, as well as prospectives and recommendations