This D-Lib paper by Altman and King looks interesting: “A Proposed Standard for the Scholarly Citation of Quantitative Data”. (And thanks to Herbert Van de Sompel for drawing attention to the paper.) Gist of it (Sect. 3) is
_“We propose that citations to numerical data include, at a minimum, six required components. The first three components are traditional, directly paralleling print documents. … Thus, we add three components using modern technology, each of which is designed to persist even when the technology changes: a unique global identifier, a universal numeric fingerprint, and a bridge service. They are also designed to take advantage of the digital form of quantitative data.
An example of a complete citation, using this minimal version of the proposed standards, is as follows:
**Micah Altman; Karin MacDonald; Michael P. McDonald, 2005, “Computer Use in Redistricting”,
hdl:1902.1/AMXGCNKCLU UNF:3:J0PkMygLPfIyT1E/8xO/EA==
http://id.thedata.org/hdl%3A1902.1%2FAMXGCNKCLU
“_