Dataset Citation: Home

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Datasets are increasingly being recognized as valuable, legitimate, standalone products of research that contribute to scholarly discourse. Properly cited published manuscripts are clearly identified and easily located within their respective publication. In the same way, proper identification of datasets facilitates access, sharing, and reuse by making them unique and discoverable.

Some style manuals and publishers have guidelines for citing datasets. Or, you may see a “preferred citation” listed on the data repository where you found the data. 

Example (APA 6th Ed.): Pew Hispanic Center. (2008). 2007 Hispanic Healthcare Survey [Data file and code book]. Retrieved from http://pewhispanic.org/datasets/ 

The Michigan State University Libraries have developed a useful guide that provides additional information about data citation, including specific style manual examples.

If no style guidelines are available, include as many of the following elements as possible:

• Author(s): The creator(s) of the dataset. May be an institution or person(s).
  • If available, creator IDs such as ORCID should be included.
• Publication/Release date: Whichever is the later: the date the dataset was made available, the date all quality assurance procedures were completed, or the date the embargo period (if applicable) expired.
• Title: The formal title of the dataset.
• Version: The version of the data used. Careful version tracking is critical to accurate citation.
• Publisher/Archive/Distributor: The organization distributing or hosting the data, ideally over the long term.
• Identifier: A unique string that identifies the resource. Should be a persistent scheme such as a DOI or handle. If you deposit data in the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive, the library can assign your dataset a DOI and a persistent URL.
• Access Date: Because data can be dynamic and changeable in ways that are not always reflected in release dates and versions, it is important to indicate when data was accessed.

Additional recommendations:

• If you have generated/collected data to be used as evidence in an academic publication, you should deposit them with a suitable data archive or repository as soon as you are able. If they do not provide you with a persistent identifier or URL for your data, encourage them to do so. To deposit your data in the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive, please complete this webform.
• Give dataset identifiers (e.g., DOI) in the form of a URL wherever possible, unless otherwise directed.
• Include data citations alongside those for textual publications. Some reference management packages now include support for datasets, which should make this easier.Cite datasets at the finest-grained level available that meets your needs. If that is not fine enough, provide details of the subset of data you are using at the point in the text where you make the citation.
• When you publish a paper that cites a dataset, notify the repository that holds the dataset, so it can add a link from that dataset to your paper.

This guide was adapted, with modifications, from Oregon State University Libraries’ “Citation of Datasets,” licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License.