Using Data Citations

If you formally cite research data, like you would cite an article, book, or other resource, we can find your publication and add it to the ICPSR Bibliography, linking it to the data you used. This gives credit to the data creator, and allows your readers to find the data underlying your conclusions. 

Link to two posters created by ICPSR Metadata & Preservation staff, showing the variety of ways authors acknowledge data use. The first poster shows multiple ways in which ICPSR study DOIs are used —beyond acknowledging the data being analyzed in the publication. The second poster categorizes examples of the common ways that authors informally and opaquely cite data.

You can encourage responsible data reuse by citing data. As with any other source, in the body of your publication, include a shortened in-line citation referencing the data used in the author's analysis. Then, in the References section, include the full citation, which can be found on each ICPSR study home page, and be sure to include the provided URL that contains the study's registered DOI.

Example:

Methods Section

In this paper, we reused data from the Maternal Lifestyle Study (Lester et al., 2016).

References Section

Lester, B., Bada, H., Bauer, C., Shankaran, S., Whitaker, T., LaGasse, L. & Hammond, J. (2016). Maternal Lifestyle Study in Four Sites in the United States, 1993-2011. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2016-03-31. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR34312.v9.

Other Resources

Go to ICPSR Bibliography Portal