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Research Data Management (SC)

Data Citation

Data Citations

Citing research data in a manner similar to traditional scholarly works can help ensure proper attribution, improve reproducibility, improve discoverability, and help provide credit for data as a scholarly output. According to Force11's examples of Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles and the Digital Curation Centre's How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications Data should be cited as follows:

  • Include an in text citation near the claims relying on the data in the form of the citation style required by publisher. Additional information may also be included in the in text citation, such as portion of data set used.  
    • Force11 gives the example: [Author(s), Year, Portion or Subset of Data Used].
  • Full citations should be included in the reference list, following the format of the required citation style. Ball and Duke provide a comprehensive list of data citation elements. 
    • If no format exists, Force11's examples recommend: Author(s), Year, Dataset Title, Data Repository or Archive, VersionGlobal Persistent Identifier.
  • Give permanent identifiers, such as DOIs or ARKs, in the form of a linked URL if possible.
  • Cite data sets at the most detailed level possible and provide version if appropriate.
  • When citing a dataset, notify the repository so a link can be added to your paper if possible.

Further Resources

Data Citation and Linking
DataCite
How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications
Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles