UN Millennium Development Goals e-learning materials

Citing International Data

In this short activity you will discover how to cite international data correctly in your research work and acknowledge the copyright and other intellectual property owners. The data to be cited is that used in a previous activity - the MDG data downloaded from the UN Common Database via ESDS International.

Step 1: Add copyright and source information

You will first need to add a general statement giving credit to the source and distributor of the international data you have used and also include copyright information.

Add the following copyright statement to your research article (it can be given at the start of, or within, the text, or at the end of the article before the bibliographic references/citations):

• This research was based on the UN Common Database data, produced by the United Nations, and supplied by ESDS International. Title and ownership of the data remain with the United Nations.

Step 2: Add the bibliographic citation for this database

Photo by: library riot, Creative Commons, Flickr

You will now need to add the bibliographic citation of the database in a standard format which should should include enough information so that the exact version of the data being cited can be located.

Add the following bibliographic citation to your research article (it should be included in the bibliographic references/citations section):

• United Nations (2007). United Nations Common Database (Edition: 22 November 2007). ESDS International, University of Manchester. DOI: 10.5257/un/cdb/2007