Citing and Referencing Data Accessed through QDR


Appropriately citing data in research publications is a critical element of research transparency. Referencing the data on which a publication is based allows other scholars to locate those data in order to evaluate the author’s claims or (when relevant) seek to replicate or reproduce her results. Because references to data are harvested by electronic social science indexes, accurately citing data also facilitates tracking the impact of data and allows their creation to be recognized and rewarded.

Any article, chapter, book, or blog partially or completely based on data shared via QDR must indicate, in the acknowledgment section of the piece, that the data underlying the project are held in QDR. The data must also be correctly cited. Citation details can be found in the User Guide for each active citation compilation, data collection, or topic cluster archived with QDR. A citation should contain sufficient information so that the precise version of the data being cited can be located, and should include a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Permanent identification through the use of such a global, persistent identifier (rather than a URL) is preferable, as even if the data change locations the DOI will continue to link to them.

Scholars who use data held in QDR—for example in an article, chapter, book, thesis or dissertation, conference paper, or blog—are required to advise QDR that they have done so, and to provide a bibliographic citation to that publication.