Citing Electronic Data Sources
Introduction:
This site will offer suggestions and guidance for how to cite electronic data sources in bibliographies. As we will discuss below, proper citation of data sources is of the utmost importance in quantitative research. Unfortunately, while the academic community places much emphasis on citation of data sources, it has yet to produce any common standard for how electronic data sources should be cited/documented. Instead, it has generally been up to data providers to provide guidance for how to cite such sources. Oftentimes, this guidance is forthcoming. Oftentimes, however, it is not, and this site will offer you guidelines on what information to include in citations and provide examples for specific electronic data sources. By following these guidelines, you will make it much easier for others to identify and locate the data that you have used in your research. Please keep in mind that these are guidelines and that the exact manner in which you cite electronic data sources will also be a function of whatever bibliographic style your professor/advisor or publisher wants you to use.
The Need for Proper Citation:
Proper documentation of sources is a key component of scholarly research, and the need for documentation is no less important for data sources than for bibliographic sources. It is vital that scholars in the social sciences and elsewhere who use quantitative data in their work be clear and explicit as to the sources for their data. This is in part because of the importance of replication in the sciences - in principle, your analysis must be capable of being replicated by other scholars so as to better-assess the soundness of your work, which requires that those other scholars have access to the data used in your original analysis (see this site from Harvard professor Gary King for more discussion of replication in the social sciences). Greater transparency in sources also encourages greater accountability in research and increases confidence that the data used in your work are suited for the questions you are asking, which in turn will make others more confident in whatever conclusions your research presents. In addition, thorough documentation of data sources makes it easier for scholars to assess whether sources used in your research are appropriate for use in their own work. More generally, the scholarly community is placing a growing emphasis on greater transparency in and documentation of data sources, to the point where some scholarly journals even require authors to submit their data to archives where others can download them (see, for instance, the submission policies of the Journal of Conflict Resolution and the data-archiving policies of the National Science Foundation's Division of Social and Economic Sciences). And, on a less abstract level, failure to properly cite sources can constitute plagarism, which is a violation of the Honor Code. If you are also in need of assistance for how to cite bibliographic materials, you should visit the Emory Woodruff Library's guide to citing sources.
Source-Specific Citation Formats
General Citation Guidelines
Citing Data Center Resources
Other Guides for Citing Electronic Data Sources:
"Bibliographic Citations Tutorial," Institute for Social Science Research Data Archive, UCLA
"How Do I Cite the Data in My Bibliography?" Data Library Service, University of Toronto
"Citing Geospatial Data Resources," University Map Library, University of Waterloo
American Psychological Association General Form for Electronic References--This site is a general guide for citing electronic resources, not data resources specifically.
"APA Citation Style, 5th Edition (2001)" --Another guide for citing electronic resources in general, from Pace University.
Home | Analyze Data Online | Help Resources | Contacts & Hours | Emory General Libraries