: Re: How to write references? I am writing a document for my project, and some information is from another website, I didn't copy the text but use their data, do I need to write that website in

@Deb2945533

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Before you write a reference:

check whether their data has a specific licence that would require a specific type of reference (e.g. copying part of the licence for derivative work).
check whether they may have a section that clarifies how to cite their data;
consider writing an email to ask how to correctly reference it.

The reason is that the data may not be part of the website per se, but it may belong to the company, or the generic entity that owns the website, or may even belong to a third party that has licensed it to the website.

If you wish to write a reference nonetheless:

Data from source.com

or, better, especially if the website is not in the language of your typical reader:

Data from www.source.com/path/to/data

Add dates or versions if the data is subject to changes.

I would use the term "courtesy of" only if they replied to a query and confirmed that you are free to use it in any way you wish. Further, you could even use "personal communication of [person]" if the owner of the data sent it to you.

The language itself is an issue if your main readership speaks language A, but:

the data is organized in a manner that would require knowledge of language B;
the data comes with a licence written in language B

In the first case, I would advice adding a footnote, or a supplementary section to describe the structure and content of the data for reproducibility of the analysis. In the second case, you could add a note in the reference (e.g. data from [link], subject to licence [link to licence]) and confide in the power of google.translate.

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