Social Science Data Services
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Data Services > Citing Data

See also: Responsible Use of Data, Bibliographic Software.

Citing Data

When writing a paper or doing a presentation, it is important to cite not only the literature consulted but also the data files used, even if they are data files that you have produced. Citing data is important in order to:

• Give the data producer appropriate credit
• Enable readers of your work to access the data, for their own use or to replicate your results

Elements of a citation include:

• Author(s)
• Title
• Year of publication: The date when the dataset was published or released (rather than the collection or coverage date)
• Publisher: the data center/repository
• Any applicable identifier (including edition or version)
• Availability and access: URL or other location information for the data

Examples:

• Complete dataset, e.g.:
• Bachman, Jerald G., Lloyd D. Johnston, and Patrick M. O'Malley. Monitoring the Future: A Continuing Study of American Youth (12th-Grade Survey), 1998 [Computer file]. Conducted by University of Michigan, Survey Research Center. ICPSR02751-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 2006-05-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02751.
• ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model, version 1, ASTGTM_N11E122_num.tif, ASTGTM_N11E123_num.tif, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) of Japan and NASA, downloaded from https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/api/, October 27, 2009
• Subject archive entry, e.g.:
  Genbank accession number, available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

For guidelines on how to cite data from particular archives, see:

• Data catalogs like HMDC and ICPSR, which have standard citations included in the study record.
• ICPSR: Why and how should I cite data?
• How to Cite Roper Center Data

For further discussion on standard elements to include in data citations, see: Micah Altman and Gary King, A Proposed Standard for the Scholarly Citation of Quantitative Data, D-Lib Magazine March/April 2007, Volume 13, Number 3/4.