Citing Data | Data Availability Statements | Citing Code

Cite Your Own Data

Are you publishing a paper referencing your research data? Include a reference to your data in the text of the paper with a data availability statement and add a data citation to your references section.

This will ensure that the data citation becomes part of the scholarly record and provides pathways for others to find your work. Research funders also want you to share data and a citation is proof of your data being shared.

If you are depositing data with the UI, we can reserve a DOI for your dataset, so you can include it in the article submission. We can also assist with sharing and publishing data. More here

Cite Others’ Data

Give credit to other data sources when you use them, just as you do when using published literature. Whether for a paper or a presentation, it’s important to cite the data files used.

Parts of a Data Citation

A data citation may include some or all of the following elements. These will depend on the established practices in your research field, characteristics of the data, and citation style you use.

Required elements:

  • Creator(s) of the dataset
  • Title of the dataset
  • Year of publication of the dataset
  • Version, when appropriate
  • Publisher: name of institution, repository, or data center
  • Identifier (e.g. DOI or other persistent link)

Strongly encouraged:

  • Resource type, in brackets ([Dataset])
  • Analysis software, if required
  • Date accessed

Example

Li, X., & Lehmler, H.-J. (2025). Synthesis and Characterization of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) Mixture [Dataset]. University of Iowa. https://doi.org/10.25820/data.007553

Guidelines

Citation style guides/manuals are beginning to include data as a resource type. The Citation Formatters (above) will provide the information in a style that approximates style requirements, so you may want to confirm that those generated citations completely follow a particular citation style guide.

Citation formatters

If you have a DOI, you can use the CrossCite DOI data citation formatter  or the DataCite citation formatter  to create citations corresponding to a variety of citation styles.

Most data repositories will provide citations for their datasets. Some will also request that you cite the related publication(s) along with the data.

Data Availability Statements

An increasing number of journals require or encourage the inclusion of a data availability statement in articles, which describes how readers can access the data that underlies the article.

The chart below shows some sample language you might use for a data availability statement.

Check your journal and publisher for guidelines. For instance, Taylor & Francis and Cambridge University Press provide a variety of examples.

Data Availability

Sample Language
Data openly available in a public repository that issues datasets with DOIs The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [repository name, e.g. “Iowa Research Online”] at [http://doi.org/[doi]]
Data available on request due to privacy/ethical restrictions The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to [explanation of restrictions, e.g. “their containing private information”] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Data available on request from the authors The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Data sharing not applicable – no new data generated Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

 
Data available within the article or its supplementary materials All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and/or] its supplementary information files.

 
Data subject to third party restrictions The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are, however, available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].

 

The chart above is adapted from the article cited below and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY):
Hrynaszkiewicz, I, Simons, N, Hussain, A, Grant, R and Goudie, S. 2020. “Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers.” Data Science Journal, DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-005

Cite Code

Citing code (your own and that of others) is equally important as citing data, and for similar reasons: you’re providing appropriate credit, facilitating reproducibility, and ensuring future researchers can find and use the code.

Citation Elements for Code

  • Creator (i.e., authors or organization who developed the software)
  • Title
  • Identifier (e.g., DOI or other persistent link)
  • Date of publication
  • Version
  • Publisher: name of institution hosting the repository, or name of repository
  • Resource type, in brackets  (e.g. [Software],[ComputationalNotebook] for Jupyter)

Guidelines and Examples

The Force11 Software Citation Implementation Working Group has created principles for software citation. Their GitHub page shows examples of citing software in both APA and Chicago Style.