Data Citation without Online Link

Do you have any examples of data citation for proprietary data that does not have an online link? All the examples are much more formal than the random spreadsheets [agency 1] sent over! [agency 2] has a more formal naming system, but again, there’s no persistent indicator for the datasets because they are not accessible.

A known problem with no clear solution. Here’s how I try to approach the problem:

• A citation has author, title, and a publisher, with optional other locators. (see Chicago Manual of Style (subscription) and CMS Quick Guide on citations.

Note that Chicago-style does not actually require the locator information - see the examples for “E-book” Kindle.

“Electronic content presented without formal ties to a publisher or sponsoring body has the authority equivalent to that of unpublished or self-published material in other media.”

Thus, one can construct the citation as - Author: the provider of the data (the agency) - Title: whatever the provider would recognize and re-furnish to a third-party - Publisher: the provider of the data (or its higher-level institution, e.g., the government department or ministry) - Locators (optional): maybe something along the lines of “Multiple electronic files” with possible additional information “, provided to the author under DUA (date or any contract number)”

An example might thus be:

Agency 1. 2007. Name of DataSet. Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Multiple electronic files.

For more information, see the AEA Data Editor’s guidance on Data Citations.