People have been working on data citation issues for a long time. Different groups and different communities have come up with different guidelines and recommendations on how data should be cited. The different approaches generally agree in principle, but there are some distinct differences.
At the first Plenary of RDA people from many organizations came to realize that it was time to harmonize approaches. A Data Citation Synthesis group of 40 individuals from 25+ organizations was formed. They met via telecon and then face-to-face at the RDA 2nd Plenary and DataCite meeting in Washington.
The group is now please to announce a “Draft Declaration of Data Citation Principles”. The synthesis group developed these draft principles over the past 9 months and now welcome feedback and comments from the community. The feedback received by the end of 2013 will be reviewed and incorporated into the final principles. Once the final principles are published, a mechanism will be in place for worldwide endorsement. More critically, the group will also begin to promote implementation of the principles while exploring detailed examples of implementation.
Please provide your feedback by posting your comments on the discussion forum http://www.force11.org/datacitation.