An acknowledgement is a general statement giving credit to the source and distributor and includes copyright information. It can be given at the start of, or within, the text, or at the end of the article before the bibliographic references/citations. The information required (e.g. depositor, sponsor) can be found in the study description.

A suggested format for acknowledging data, using the example of research using the Health Survey for England 1995 and 1997, is:

This research was based on the Health Survey for England, 1995 and the Health Survey for England 1997, produced by the Joint Health Surveys Unit of Social and Community Planning and University College London, sponsored by the Department of Health, and supplied by the UK Data Archive. The data are Crown copyright.

A citation is more formal than an acknowledgement. It follows a standard format and should include enough information so that the exact version of the data being cited can be located. It does not include information on sponsor or copyright. A recommended form of the bibliographic citation is set out in the 'study information and citation' file. Each dataset should have a separate citation. As an example the recommended format for citations for the Health Survey for England 1995 and 1997 are:

Joint Health Surveys Unit of Social and Community Planning Research and University College London, Health Survey for England, 1995 [computer file]. 3rd Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], March 2001. SN: 3796.

Joint Health Surveys Unit of Social and Community Planning Research and University College London, Health Survey for England, 1997 [computer file]. 2nd Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], December 2000. SN: 3979.

Also see Citing international data on the ESDS International web site and Citing data on the Census.ac.uk web site.