Data Management

Benefits of Citing Data

Proper citation of data sources has both immediate and long term benefits to users and producers of data. 

Benefits for data producers:

• provides proper attribution and credit
• creates a bibliographic "trail", connecting publications and supporting data
• demonstrates the impact of their work and establishes research data as an important contribution to the scholarly record

Benefits for data users:

• citation makes it easier to find datasets
• supports persistence of datasets
• encourages the reuse of data for new research questions

Benefits for everyone:

• increases transparency and reproducibility
   

Components of a Data Citation

Citing data is very similar to citing publications; there are many "correct" formats to use, but we suggest including the following important information:

• creator(s) or contributor(s)
• date of publication
• title of dataset
• publisher
• identifier (e.g. Handle, ARK, DOI) or URL of source
• version, when appropriate
• date accessed, when appropriate

The order of the information is not as important as having sufficient information to find the data set(s) used. Consider the style guidelines of the research domain or lab group, data source, or preferred publisher (see "Related information" below).

Some data publishers/archives/repositories provide a suggested citation format with specific additional information (e.g. resource type, retrieval data, funder/sponsor). They may also request citation of related publication(s) along with the data. Be sure to review publisher/archive/repository citation style guides carefully. In most other cases, you can follow your discipline's scholarly citation style. The next section provides examples of common repository styles, as well as APA/MLA/Chicago styles.
 

Examples of Data Citation Styles

In the event the publisher/archive/repository doesn't list a citation style here is additional information:

• How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications. Digital Curation Centre (DCC). http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/cite-datasets

Related information

Data Citation Standards and Practices. CODATA-ICSTI. http://www.codata.org/task-groups/data-citation-standards-and-practices.

Data Citation Synthesis Group: Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles. FORCE11. https://www.force11.org/group/joint-declaration-data-citation-principles-final.

Data Citation. Australian National Data Service (ANDS). http://www.ands.org.au/working-with-data/citation-and-identifiers/data-citation. 

Get Recognition: Data Citation. The DataVerse Network. https://dataverse.org/best-practices/data-citation. 

Provide a citation and document provenance for your dataset. DataONE. http://www.dataone.org/best-practices/provide-citation-and-document-provenance-your-dataset. 

Data Citation Guidelines for Earth Science Data Version 2. Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP). 2019. https://esip.figshare.com/articles/Data_Citation_Guidelines_for_Earth_Science_Data_Version_2/8441816.

Data Citation. The United States Geological Survey (USGS). https://www.usgs.gov/products/data-and-tools/data-management/data-citation. 

Data Archiving and Citation. The American Meteorological Society (AMS). https://www2.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/authors/journal-and-bams-authors/journal-and-bams-authors-guide/data-archiving-and-citation/. 

Adapted from the Research Data Management Service Group website (https://data.research.cornell.edu), Cornell University. Made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Retrieved from https://data.research.cornell.edu/content/data-citation.