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Publish/Share > Citing Your Data

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Citing Your Data

It is important not only to cite published articles but also datasets within a publication. Citing datasets gives proper credit to the researcher and reduces the risk of plagiarism. See Describe > Data Citation for more information.

Data Citations

Example Data Citation

The following example of a dataset citation is from the Earth Science and Information Partners (ESIP).

Zwally, H.J., R. Schutz, C. Bentley, J. Bufton, T. Herring, J. Minster, J. Spinhirne, and R. Thomas. 2003. GLAS/ICESat L1A Global Altimetry Data V018, 15 October to 18 November 2003. National Snow and Ice Data Center. dataset accessed 2011-07-21 at doi:10.3334/NSIDC/gla01.

A typical data citation generally consists of seven elements:

  • Author or principal investigator
  • Release date
  • Title of the data
  • Version or edition number
  • Archive and/or distributer
  • Persistent locator/identifier [see Preserve > Persistent DOIs for more information]
  • Access date and time

If relevant, other elements can be included such as data format, 3rd party producer, subset of the data, name of editor or contributor, publication place, data within a larger work.

See Describe > Data Citation for more information on citing your data.

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