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ICPSR (Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research)

This is a guide to ICPSR, a depository for social science data sets.

Citing Data

It is just as important to cite datasets as other sources of information such as books and journal articles that contributed to the research. The key elements to include when citing datasets are:

  • Title: Complete title of the dataset, including the edition or version number, if applicable
  • Author: Name(s) of each individual or organizational entity responsible for the creation of the dataset
  • Date: Year the dataset was published or disseminated
  • Version: Look for a version or edition number
  • Persistent identifier: This is a unique identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). A DOI is a unique persistent identifier for a published digital object, such as an article of a study, providing a link to the article or study. This means that if you publish an article using ICPSR data and you include the DOI in the data citation, you make it easy for other researchers to get back to the original data.

For example, the same dataset is cited here in various styles:

APA (6th edition)

Smith, T.W., Marsden, P.V., & Hout, M. (2011). General social survey, 1972-2010 cumulative file(ICPSR31521-v1) [data file and codebook]. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center [producer]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. doi: 10.3886/ICPSR31521.v1

MLA (7th edition)

Smith, Tom W., Peter V. Marsden, and Michael Hout. General Social Survey, 1972-2010 Cumulative File. ICPSR31521-v1. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center [producer]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2011. Web. 23 Jan 2012. doi:10.3886/ICPSR31521.v1

Chicago (16th edition) (author-date)

Smith, Tom W., Peter V. Marsden, and Michael Hout. 2011. General Social Survey, 1972-2010 Cumulative File. ICPSR31521-v1. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center. Distributed by Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. doi:10.3886/ICPSR31521.v1

Additional Resources for Citing Data