From Opensciency - A core open science curriculum by and for the research community: 

“Acknowledgements and citations contribute towards fostering a culture of sharing data without fear of ideas or recognition being stolen. If a researcher can trust that their work will be cited, and used to further the development of science, the idea of making data open is more appealing and mutually beneficial. 

Further, data citation aids transparency and allows the original authors and new researchers to easily track how the data is being used to answer different questions, and gain insights from related as well as unrelated fields they wouldn’t ordinarily read about. 

Use of standard citation practices are recommended to ensure due credit is given.” 

If you are a data or software producer, it is important to make sure that your public products have easily accessible recommended citations for others to use. This practice helps to increase attribution to your hard work. The USGS has guidance for data citations on the USGS Data Management Website. Remember most organizations (including USGS) and journals require you to cite all inputs supporting reproducible science. 

Action: Search for one of your data or software digital object identifiers (DOIs) (e.g., 10.5066/xxxxxxxx) in Google Dataset Search or DataCite Commons to see if it has been cited.