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Data Resources in the Health Sciences

An inventory of resources to support research data needs in the health sciences field. This guide is constantly being updated; please send feedback via the Comments links.

How To Cite

The secondary use of datasets is a relatively new and expanding phenomenon.  The International Council for Science's Committee on Data for Science and Technology and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information, jointly as the CODATA-ICSTI Task Group on Data Citation Standards and Practices, have published a report with a list of target practices for citing data: Out of Cite, Out of Mind: The current state of practice, policy, and technology for the citation of data.  

FORCE11 Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship has a similar list of guiding principles for data within scholarly literature, another dataset, or any other research object.

Although specific reference styles do not seem to have addressed this format specifically, there are some resources to help in formatting dataset citations.

Crosscite.org - DOI Citation Formatter - format citation in a wide variety of styles using the DOI

 

Cite Datasets and Links to Publications (Centre for Data Curation)
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/cite-datasets 

AMA Manual of Style http://www.amamanualofstyle.com/ No examples of how to cite.  Information on how to represent and acknowledge data.
  • 4 Visual Representation of Data (http://www.amamanualofstyle.com/oso/private/content/jama/9780195176339/p050.html)
  • 5.6 Intellectual Property: Ownership, Access, Rights, and Management: 5.6.1 Ownership and Control of Data.
  • 5.2 Acknowlegements: 5.2.5 Access to Data Statement.
APA Style Guide to Electronic Resources
[UW Catalog Link]

See Reference Examples:  Data Sets, Software, Measurement Instrucments, and Apparatus in General format: Rightsholder, A. A.  (year).  Title [data format] Retrieval from <url>

Example from Style Guide:

Pew Hispanic Center. (2004). Changing channels and crisscrossing cultures: A survey
     of Latinos on the news media [Data file and code book]. Retrieved from
     http://pewhispanic.org/datasets/ 

Example from Task Group on Data Citation Standards and Practices, C.-I. (2013). Out of Cite, Out of Mind: The Current State of Practice, Policy, and Technology for the Citation of Data.Data Science Journal, 12, CIDCR1-CIDCR75. 

Cool, H. E. M., & Bell, M. (2011). Excavations at St Peter’s Church, Barton-upon-Humber [Data set].doi:10.5284/1000389

Citing Medicine, 2nd edition.  The NLM style guide for authors, editors and publishers
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/  Dryad Digital Repository [Internet]. Durham (NC): Dryad. 2008 Jan -   [cited 2014 Oct 3]. Available from: http://www.datadryad.org/.

FlyBase: a Database of Drosophila Genes & Genomes [Internet]. Version FB2006_01. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University. 2006 Dec 8 -   [cited 2007 Feb 21]. Available from: http://flybase.bio.indiana.edu/.

The GDB Human Genome Database [Internet]. [Research Triangle Park (NC)]: RTI International. 1998 -   [cited 2007 Feb 22]. Available from: http://www.gdb.org/.

ProQolid: Patient-Reported Outcome and Quality of Life Instruments Database [Internet]. Lyon (France): Mapi Research Institute. c2001 -   [updated 2005 Nov; cited 2007 Jan 31]. Available from: http://www.proqolid.org/.

Gene [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US), National Center for Biotechnology Information. [2004] -   . ADRA2A adrenergic, alpha-2A-, receptor [Homo sapiens]; [updated 2011 Jul 31; cited 2011 Aug 1]; [about 5 p.]. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene?term=150 Gene ID:150

EARSS: the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System [Internet]. Bilthoven (Netherlands): RIVM. 2001 - 2005. Susceptibility results for E. coli isolates in Denmark (DK) in 2005; [cited 2007 Feb 16]; [about 1 screen]. Available from: http://www.rivm.nl/earss/database/ by selecting Denmark, 2005, E. coli, Aminoglycosides, Table.

British Cardiovascular Intervention Society. Number of coronary bypass operations and percutaneous coronary interventions per year 1980-2004, United Kingdom. 2005 [cited 2007 Mar 9]. In: Allender S, Peto V, Rayner M, Scarborough P, Boxer A. heartstats: British Heart Foundation Statistics Database [Internet]. London: British Heart Foundation. c2003 -   [updated 2006 Nov 3]. [about 2 screens]. Available from: http://www.heartstats.org/temp/Figsp3.3spweb06.xls

Individual journals may have specifications for datasets,

  • check the information for Authors
  • check for published examples of citations to datasets within the journal

Other helpful pages

How to Cite Data (Michigan State University)
http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/citedata

DataCite
http://datacite.org

Why Cite Data? and Examples of Data Citation
http://datacite.org/whycitedata