How do I correctly cite data in a journal article?

Short Answer

If you want to refer to a data set, Include the full data citation (Author, Year, Title, Publisher, Persistent Identifier) in your reference list and refer to it according to the required citation standard (eg. “First Author et al., Year”).

Detailed Answer

A data citation is a citation as any other. As such, it should contain the authors, year, title, publisher and unique persistent identifier (e.g. a DOI). The full data citation should be included in the reference list of any publication citing the data. For the general structure, we follow the DataCite recommendations:

Creator (PublicationYear): Title. Publisher. (resourceTypeGeneral). Identifier

In case of citing a certain version of a dataset, the version should be included in the citation itself: 

Creator (PublicationYear): Title. Version. Publisher. (resourceTypeGeneral). Identifier

For more details, refer to the Citation chapter in the DataCite Metadata Schema Documentation (DataCite Metadata Working Group. (2019). DataCite Metadata Schema Documentation for the Publication and Citation of Research Data. Version 4.3. DataCite e.V. https://doi.org/10.14454/7xq3-zf69)

See also:

• How to cite GFBio