Best practices involve acknowledging both what was used and from where, and where the data from those uses are deposited (with a reference back to the source). Such information is critical for scientific attribution and replicability.
The American Ornithological Society Committee on Bird Collections therefore provides the following guidelines for acknowledging and citing use of museum specimens and/or data in publications, presentations, and data repositories. Specimen is defined here as any physical or digital object, representing a species occurrence and/or phenotype, that is housed and curated in an institutional repository, including (but not limited to): skins, skeletons, fluids, tissues or other genetic samples (e.g., blood), eggs, nests, audio/video recordings, and digital photographs.
In publications and presentations:
- Acknowledge each and every institution plus their respective curator(s) and other staff who provided specimens and/or data. Citing both the institution and relevant personnel is highly preferred. However, in publications where word count is restricted, the priority should be to acknowledge the institution(s) in the main text, with a more detailed acknowledgement in supporting documents. In cases where many institutions have provided material, it is still important to acknowledge every institution to give them credit.
Additionally, in publications and data repositories:
- For specimens used, cite each specimen by the institutional catalog number, three-part GUID (institution code:collection code:catalog number), or other unique identifier in a primary or supplementary table. Records that have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be cited using that identifier.
- For data downloaded from a collection management system or data aggregator, cite each record by the institutional catalog number, three-part GUID (institution code:collection code:catalog number), or other unique identifier in a primary or supplementary table. Datasets that have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be cited using that identifier.
- For data used from GenBank, NCBI-SRA, Dryad, or another data repository, cite the repository accession number and the specimen from which those data were derived by the museum catalog number, three-part GUID (institution code:collection code:catalog number), or other unique identifier in a primary or supplementary table. Records or datasets that have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be cited using that identifier.
- For genetic, genomic, or other data from your study uploaded to GenBank, NCBI-SRA, Dryad, or another data repository, cite the museum catalog number, three-part GUID (institution code:collection code:catalog number), or other unique identifier. If there is a specific field for the voucher (e.g., specimen_voucher in GenBank), enter the catalog number or GUID in that field. Records or datasets that have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) should be cited using that identifier.
Citation policies and norms by data provider:
Institutions may have individual policies and norms for citing use of their collections. Researchers accessing specimens and/or data from those collections should follow the institutional guidelines and cite the institutional providers of data/specimens. In addition, the following biodiversity data providers have published policies and norms for citing records: