Finding Data and Statistics: Citing Data

There are no official adopted standards for how to cite data, but...

You can look to author guidelines on how to cite data. For example, some datasets will come with recommended citations from those who collected the data or the data repository. You can also look to previously published papers using your data and/or in your field. 

While there are no formal standards, consider what types of information you or your reader would need to get back to the original data source. 

The following elements are required as the minimum by DataCite:

• Creator
• Publication Year
• Title
• Publisher
• Access information, e.g. a DOI (digital object identifier) or a link to the dataset.

Recommended

It's always better to include more than less in a citation! Other things to include in a data citation include:

• Version
• Resource Type