Research data are fundamental to scientific discovery, transparency, and reproducibility, yet they continue to receive significantly less recognition than traditional scholarly publications. Although researchers and research data repositories invest substantial effort in creating, documenting, curating, preserving, and disseminating high-quality datasets, these contributions often remain largely invisible within research assessment and scholarly communication. Inconsistent citation practices further limit data discoverability, reuse, and appropriate recognition of the work invested in creating and curating research data.
To address these challenges, the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) established the Data Citation Working Group to develop practical recommendations that promote data citation as a standard scholarly practice. Building on internationally recognised principles from FORCE11 and the Research Data Alliance (RDA), the CESSDA Data Citation Guide translates these principles into practical guidance for implementation across the research ecosystem.
The guide adopts a system-wide perspective, recognising that effective data citation requires coordinated action rather than relying solely on individual researchers. It defines complementary roles and responsibilities for six key stakeholder groups: researchers, data repositories, journals and publishers, research-performing organisations, research policy and strategy development bodies, and ethics committees. Practical recommendations cover persistent identifiers, metadata, versioning, citation formats, repository services, publishing workflows, institutional policies, research assessment, and awareness-raising activities.
The presentation demonstrates how these recommendations can be implemented in practice through examples from Slovenia. These include the integration of data citation requirements into the national open science framework and legislation, institutional policies for research data management, guidance for journals and publishers developed by the Slovenian RDA Node, and ongoing efforts to incorporate data citation into research organisations' workflows, research assessment, and scholarly publishing. These examples illustrate how coordinated national and institutional initiatives can support the wider adoption of data citation principles.
By moving beyond high-level principles towards practical implementation, the CESSDA Data Citation Guide contributes to embedding the principle of “If you use it, cite it” throughout the research lifecycle. Widespread adoption of these recommendations can strengthen transparency, reproducibility, interoperability, and FAIR data practices while ensuring appropriate recognition for the researchers and research infrastructures that produce, curate, and preserve valuable research data.
The CESSDA Data Citation Guide is available at https://datacitation.cessda.eu.
