Research Data Management: Citing Data

The format based on the Chicago Manual of Style 15th edition is: Authors or group. Date of the release. Title of the data set. Editor or compiler. Place of Publication. Data Publisher. Access date. URI or other distribution method.

"Data publishers (e.g. data centers) have a responsibility to work with data providers and science teams to develop the actual content of the citation."

Examples taken from the IPY page [accessed 2010 Sept 16]

Cavalieri, D., C. Parkinson, P. Gloersen, and H. J. Zwally. 1996, updated 2006. Sea ice concentrations from Nimbus-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I passive microwave data, March 2002–Sept. 2003. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Data set accessed 2008-05-14 at http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0051.html.

König-Langlo, Gert and Hatwig Gernandt. 2006. Compilation of radiosonde data from the Antarctic Georg-Forster station of the German Democratic Republic from 1985 to 1992. Bremerhaven, Germany: Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research Data set accessed 2008-05-22. doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.547983

The Digital Curation Centre in the UK has produced a large body of guidelines and advice for data management. This latest report by Alexander Ball and Monica Duke focuses on best practices in data citation, citing data at the most useful level.

http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/cite-datasets

Ball, A. & Duke, M. (2011). How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications. DCC How-to Guides. Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Available online: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides

DataCite, www.datacite.org, is an international collaboration of university libraries and information centers that supports making datasets discoverable and citable. Datacite's Metadata Schema (v. 4.6) is considered one of the widely adopted and stable standards for publication and citation of research data and other scholarly outputs. A majority of open data repositories create Data Object Identifiers (DOI) when submitting a dataset, a type of Persistent Identifier.  Datasets with DOIs ensure accessibility even if URLs change, enhancing discoverability and ensuring the impact of your research is measured.  

Green, T. (2009). We need publishing standards for datasets and data tables. OECD Publishing White Paper. Paris: OECD Publishing. doi:10.1787/603233448430

DataCite Metadata Working Group. (2024). DataCite Metadata Schema Documentation for the Publication and Citation of Research Data and Other Research Outputs. Version 4.6. DataCite e.V. https://doi.org/10.14454/mzv1-5b55