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Citing EDI data

edi-mcp is only a conduit. The data packages it finds belong to their creators and are published by the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI). The intellectual rights stated in each package, together with EDI's data policy1, govern how you may use and credit them; this project's license does not.

What to cite: one revision, one DOI

An EDI data package is identified as scope.identifier.revision, for example knb-lter-hbr.14.22 (scope knb-lter-hbr, the Hubbard Brook LTER; identifier 14; revision 22). Published revisions are immutable: changes to a package appear as a new revision, and each revision has its own DOI of the form doi:10.6073/pasta/<md5>. Cite the revision you actually used, by its DOI, so that others get the same data. Package identifiers explains the formats edi-mcp accepts.

Citation styles

EDI's citation service, cite.edirepository.org, formats a citation for any public package without a key2. It offers the ESIP, DRYAD and BIBTEX styles, and JSON fields with Accept: application/json. For knb-lter-hbr.14.22 on 2026-10-19:

USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station. 2026. Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest: Total Daily Precipitation by Watershed, 1956 - ongoing ver 22. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/2017345f0977c0f7c46e1ad90ce1b062.

USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station (2026) Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest: Total Daily Precipitation by Watershed, 1956 - ongoing. Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/2017345f0977c0f7c46e1ad90ce1b062

@misc{knb-lter-hbr.14.22,
    author={USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station},
    title={{Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest: Total Daily Precipitation by Watershed, 1956 - ongoing. ver 22}},
    year={2026},
    publisher={Environmental Data Initiative},
    doi={10.6073/pasta/2017345f0977c0f7c46e1ad90ce1b062},
    url={https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/2017345f0977c0f7c46e1ad90ce1b062},
    note = {Type: dataset}
}

You can request these yourself, for example https://cite.edirepository.org/cite/knb-lter-hbr.14.22?style=ESIP. The EDI Data Portal's landing page for each package shows the same citation.

edi_get_citation is planned

A dedicated edi_get_citation tool that returns these styles is part of the next build step and is not available yet (see the Roadmap). Until then, edi_search_packages returns each package's doi and portalUrl, from which the citation above can be retrieved.

Intellectual rights

EDI curates each package with the intellectual rights its provider declared in the EML metadata. EDI advocates open access without use restrictions but allows providers to declare more restrictive licenses. When a provider declares none, EDI adds a default statement based on the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 "No Rights Reserved" waiver, which also asks for attribution as professional etiquette1. Check the rights stated in the package you use rather than assuming a license; some packages are also access-restricted and need permission from their contacts.

About edi-mcp itself

If you retrieved data through edi-mcp you may mention the tool in your methods, but the citation of record is always the data package DOI. Never cite PASTA or DataONE download URLs. The edi-mcp server software is MIT-licensed by The Regents of the University of New Mexico3 and is not affiliated with or endorsed by EDI, the LTER Network or DataONE. See License.

  1. EDI Policy — Data policy, version 2.0 (updated 2026-04-01). https://edirepository.org/about/edi-policy ↩↩

  2. EDI citation service. https://cite.edirepository.org/cite/knb-lter-hbr.14.22?style=ESIP ↩

  3. edi-mcp LICENSE file. https://github.com/idss-mesa/edi-mcp/blob/main/LICENSE ↩