Data citation quantity and quality in research output of a large-scale educational panel study

In this paper, we report preliminary results of a small-scale case study about the data citation quantity and quality in research output of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), a longitudinal study analyzing educational processes in Germany across the lifespan. In order to collect research output based on NEPS data, we searched for and examined publications of a randomly selected sample of 72 NEPS data users. Altogether, we found 18 publications to be relevant for citation analysis. Compared to previous studies, the citation behavior in our sample can be assessed as better. However, publications often lack the inclusion of central data citation elements, such as a persistent identifier. The quality of data citations seems to vary across different types of research output. In a follow-up study, we plan to do a comprehensive sampling and analysis of NEPS related research output in order to verify our findings, and also to include further panel studies to compare citation behavior across different studies.