Citing Data in Publications

Data from CEDA should be cited in any article or presentation making use of the data. A full citation, akin to academic papers, will be found on the dataset catalogue page. 

A typical citation looks like this:

Met Office (2006): UK Daily Temperature Data, Part of the Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS). NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre, date of citation. http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/1bb479d3b1e38c339adb9c82c15579d8

When citing in a publication or presentation please replace the "date of citation" part with the date that you downloaded the data from CEDA as that will reference the state of the archive on the day of download. 

Data with DOIs

It is now possible for data held in the CEDA archives to be assigned a Digital Object Identifier - or DOI. A DOI enables scientists to cite datasets in the same manner as a scientific journal article, thereby enabling credit to be assigned to the dataset creators, and ensuring the discovery, permanence and stability of the dataset. For further details on DOIs and, if you are a data provider, how to obtain your own DOI for data archived at a NERC data centre please see the  NERC DOI webpage, or refer to the "Depositing data FAQ's" page.

A typical citation to use for data with a DOI is

Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), Chilbolton Facility for Atmospheric and Radio Research, [S. A. Callaghan, J. Waight, C. J. Walden, J. Agnew and S. Ventouras]. GBS 20.7GHz slant path radio propagation measurements, Sparsholt site, [Internet]. NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre, 2003-2005, 1st April 2011, doi:10.5285/E8F43A51-0198-4323-A926-FE69225D57DD

Note, in this case the Date of Citation to use is the one given in the citation as this is the date the DOI was assigned to the dataset and thus the data are then fixed.

Additional Requirements

Some individual datasets may also require additional acknowledgement. This should be indicated within the licence for the data and/or the dataset catalogue page.

For example for Met Office data the NERC - Met Office agreement required that:

 "scientific papers must give due credit to Met Office either through acknowledgement or if the data provided a significant basis of the work, co-authorship."


Some CEDA Services also require slightly different acknowledgement.
For example:

  • CEDA Trajectory Service:

    • "I am grateful to the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, for providing access to calculated trajectories using data from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts." 
    • "I wish to thank the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis for the use of its calculated trajectory data. I also thank the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts who supplied the initial data via CEDA." 
    • "Thanks to the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis for the calculation of trajectories and access to ECMWF data."

Please contact the  CEDA Helpdesk if you require advice.

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