Citing data not only provides proper attribution and credit, it also demonstrates the impact of your work and establishes research data as an important contribution to the scholarly record. Proper citation of data sources has both immediate and long-term benefits to users and producers of data, including:
increased transparency and reproducibility
makes it easier to find datasets
supports long-term persistence of datasets
encourages the reuse of data for new research questions
How to cite data
Citing data is very similar to citing publications; there are many formats to use, but we suggest including the following important information:
creator(s) or contributor(s)
date of publication
title of dataset
publisher
identifier (e.g. Handle, ARK, DOI) or URL of source
version, when appropriate
date accessed, when appropriate
Example:
Barclay, Janet Rice (2013) Stream Discharge from Harford, NY. Cornell University eCommons Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/1813/34425