Data Citation in Australian Social Science Research: Results of a Pilot Study

The importance of data citation for understanding the impact of social surveys has becoming increasingly recognized as a priority concern among research infrastructure providers and funders (ANDS, 2012, NSF, 2012; Ball and Duke, 2012). For data archives, data citation provides a mechanism to understand the dissemination activities of the archive, particularly in enabling access to data for secondary use. While social science data archives have long recommended or required the use of citations as a condition of access to datasets, the compliance with this condition is minimal (Piwowar, 2011). For this reason, many data archives and repositories have implemented or are currently exploring new mechanisms for enabling data citation, such as DOIs. Such a pilot study being conducted by the Australian Data Archive (ADA). This project involves three elements: - a review of the current literature on data citation practices in Australian and international social science - a survey of current practice among users of 5 major Australian social science data sets - a pilot study of the use of DOIs with ADA datasets. The paper will present the current results of this project, recommendations for the ADA regarding data citation, and implications for data archives and repositories, more generally.