Tromsø recommendations for citation of research data in linguistics

Abstract:

Language and linguistics datasets are often not cited, or cited imprecisely, because of confusion surrounding the proper methods for citing them. For the use of researchers and scholars in the field working with datasets, we propose components of data citation for referencing language data, both in the bibliography and in the text of linguistics publications. 

The intended audience for these recommendations consists of i) academic publishers, ii) resource providers (e.g. repositories, archives), iii) researchers citing data, and iv) researchers making data management plans, developing and depositing data, and preparing metadata. Academic publishers will have the opportunity to add these recommendations to their author guidelines for citation. Resource providers will learn which metadata and citation elements are crucial in order for data to be properly citable. Researchers using data in their publication will know how to cite these data in case publisher guidelines are underspecified. Researchers depositing data in a repository will know more about what metadata they should provide in order to publish their data so as to make them citable.

As each journal may have its own stylistic conventions, we do not address specific formats or citation styles, but rather elements of citations; however, for journals or repositories seeking to update their data citation guidance, we hope this document will be helpful. Furthermore, these recommendations are intended to be only guidelines, as we cannot account for every possibility here. This guidance is based on the Austin Principles, the FORCE11 and Research Data Alliance Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, and the Reproducible Research in Linguistics position statement.