The citing of publications such as articles and books is a standard scholarly practice. Increasingly, there is an emphasis on citing data. Possible benefits of data citation include:
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association does provide some guidance on citing a dataset. Information can be found in section 7.08 - Data Sets, Software, Measurement Instruments, and Apparatus (p. 210-11).
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC : Author.
Copies of this item are available in the CDU Library catalogue.
REFERENCE LIST
Use either format:
Rightsholder, A. A. (Year). Title of program (Version number) [Description of form]. Location: Name of producer.
or
Rightsholder, A. A. (Year). Title of program [Description of form]. Retrieved from http://xxx
A couple of things to note (see the Publication Manual for full list and description):
IN-TEXT CITATION
Include the name of the dataset and the version number.
The majority of style guides/manuals do not provide explicit guidance on how to cite research data. For further information see: Newton, M. P., Mooney, H., & Witt, M. (2010). A description of data citation instructions in style guides. Libraries Research Publications. Paper 121.
When deciding how to best cite research data, the following tips will be useful:
Standards for data citation vary across disciplines. Some data repositories and archives provide formats for citing data as part of the metadata record for the dataset.
DataCite – International Data Citation Initiative (DataCite) is a not-for-profit global association whose purpose is to promote science and research. One of its objectives is to support researchers by providing methods to locate, access and re-use datasets and to cite data with confidence.
DataCite recommends the minimum format for citing data is creator, publication year, title, publisher and identifier. Optional elements (included as appropriate) are version and resource type. Using these elements, the recommended form of a data citation is: