Maintenance of a citation catalog

One key benefit from making microdata more accessible and usable is increasing the quantity and diversity of research. Experience shows that, when quality, well-documented data are made easily accessible, much analytical output is generated. It is important to document these uses of microdata. To promote access to microdata, the IHSN citation catalog project develops and maintains a database of citations and quotes from surveys listed in our central survey catalog. Citations include articles or chapters from academic journals, books, reports, working papers, dissertations, etc. To build this database of citations, the IHSN relies primarily on Google Scholar (other databases may be used in the future), and the NADA survey cataloguing application developed by the IHSN.

The citation catalog will allow researchers and survey sponsors to:

• Identify research already undertaken in a particular region, country, or on a particular topic
• Reduce the risk of duplicating research work
• Measure and assess how survey data are used. This is particularly important in the context of the open-data initiatives, for which the repurposing of data is presented as a key argument. In a future project, and when the citation catalog has reached a target of 15,000 citations, the IHSN may conduct a detailed analysis of the citations..