Data requires citations for the same reasons journal articles and other publications require citations: to acknowledge the original author/producer and help other researchers find the resource.
A dataset citation includes all of the same components as any other citation:
- author
- title
- year of publication
- publisher (for data, this is often the archive where it is housed),
- edition or version
- access information (a URL, DOI, or another persistent identifier)
Archiving and Citing Data
JMIR suggests using DataCite or another appropriate publicly available database or repository to facilitate archiving and citing of datasets. Alternatively, data can be submitted/published separately in JMIR Data (https://data.jmir.org/) and cited accordingly. Data should be cited where referenced in the manuscript text.
Data Availability Statement
Authors are strongly recommended to add a section on 'Data Availability' in their manuscript. Data sharing statements should appear after the Acknowledgements. The statement should provide a reason and possible steps for requesting access if access is restricted. If there is code generated during the study, links to code availability are also recommended. For example statements, which may apply to your data type(s) and study design, visit: What is your data sharing policy?