In a collaborative effort between PANGAEA – Data Publisher for Earth and Environmental Science, the ICSU World Data System (WDS), and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTII) data resulting from projects related to the International Polar Year (IPY) have been extracted from literature for long time preservation and publication. In a first step ICSTII staff compiled a bibliography using keywords relevant to IPY projects. This bibliography referencing around 500 articles served as basis for PANGAEA staff to filter out journal articles having supplementary data that could be extracted either from the articles or from supplementary materials supplied with the publication. Preparation of data included a technical quality control of data (check for outliers, correctness of geocoding, precision of values etc.) and – using the editorial system of PANGAEA - annotation with metadata. Data and metadata were imported into the PANGAEA archive (relational database – RDB). Due to harmonization of content and structure of data and metadata archived data sets are efficiently usable. Data can be retrieved via the PANGAEA data portal (http://www.pangaea.de/search?q=project%3Aipy or via the WDS data portal (http://www.icsu-wds.org/services/data-portal) using the keyword IPY. Due to collaborations of PANGAEA with science publishers data can be cross-referenced with science articles. In some cases data are directly accessible from the article’s splash page (e.g. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X11001233). Until end of July 2013 more than 300 data sets have been archived. The initiative presented here describes a data management effort following the IPY. Notwithstanding the overall positive effect of the work performed the initiative also exemplifies the limitations of data management efforts that are not synchronized with science activities. Not only can be assumed that large parts of existing data from IPY projects are not archived and openly accessible, also must be noted that due to the mostly missing communication data producers cannot be included into the editorial and final assessment of data. Ideally early involvement of organizations like ICSU WDS and of WDS members would allow a better planning and also funding of project data management activities. This not only leads to more collaboration and synergies between projects during the runtime of a science program but also improves the data basis for on-going programs and projects. It is therefore one of the declared aims of ICSU to establish a closer context between science programs and WDS.