Forest and Fire Sciences

Not sure about citation styles, or want another set of eyes to check over your paper? Try the University of Idaho's Writing Center, located in the Commons, Third Floor Room 323. There are some great links on their website, too!

The library has several handbooks to make your writing as clear as possible.

Pocket Guide to Technical Writing

Main Library - PE1475.P465 2004 

Technical Writing Basics: Guide to Style and Form

Main Library - PE1475.H65 2008  

See the full list here.

The library maintains a list of citation style guides.  

One of the most commonly used in the sciences is CSE (Council of Science Editors).

The Library keeps a copy at the Reference Desk. You can also try Penn State's CSE Quick Citation Guide.

In some styles, you must abbreviate journal titles.  Use the List of Title Word Abbreviations for the internationally recognized abbreviation.

Thinking about how to manage your references more efficiently?  Take a look at the citation management software guide.

If you are following a particular style, try to form the citation according to the general rules of that style.  If in doubt, it is better to provide more information than less.

The general parts of a data citation are:

1. Responsible Party; 

2. Title of dataset; 

3. Edition or version of dataset, if applicable; 

4. Name and location of data center, repository, or publisher; 

5. Date published; 

6. Analysis software, if required; 

7. Date accessed; 

8. URL, DOI or other persistent link; 

9. Parameters selected, if applicable

Alternately, Mark Parsons from the NCAR Library suggests this:

Author(s).  ReleaseDate. Title, Version. [editor(s)]. Archive. Locator (such as DOI). [date/time accessed]. [subset used].

More information, examples, and thoughts on citing datasets can be found here.