diff --git a/doc/sphinx/io.rst b/doc/sphinx/io.rst
index 9616fc45788..c7faa9dd8ab 100644
--- a/doc/sphinx/io.rst
+++ b/doc/sphinx/io.rst
@@ -250,6 +250,16 @@ call the H5md objects :meth:`espressomd.io.writer.h5md.H5md.write` method withou
 After the last write call, you have to call the ``close()`` method to remove
 the backup file and to close the datasets etc.
 
+H5MD files can be read and modified with the python module h5py (for documentation see `h5py <http://docs.h5py.org/en/stable/>`_). For example all positions stored in the file called "h5mdfile.h5" can be read using
+
+.. code:: python
+    
+    import h5py
+    h5file = h5py.File("h5mdfile.h5", 'r')
+    positions = h5file['particles/atoms/position/value']
+
+Further the files can be inspected with the GUI tool hdfview.
+
 .. _Writing MPI-IO binary files:
 
 Writing MPI-IO binary files