How to cite responsibly
Being cited is why this site exists. This page keeps the numbers attached to their context after they leave.
このページはまだ日本語に対応していません — 以下は英語版です。
Citing, quickly
- Press Cite on any view for APA 7 / Chicago / BibTeX / plain formats. The publication year is the data year, not the year you clicked; the citation carries the snapshot id (currently
21506b7d) so the exact bytes remain recoverable. - Cite the upstream source (UNHCR / IDMC) alongside this site — we are a verifiable republication, not the origin.
- Permanent links reproduce year, metric, view and filters; share the link, not a screenshot URL.
Permanent archive (DOI)
Data snapshots are archived quarterly on Zenodo (the CERN-run permanent repository). To cite "the latest version", use the concept DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22087749 — it always resolves to the newest quarter; each quarter also has its own version DOI, listed on the Zenodo record. Even if this site disappears, the DOI and the data bundle remain.
Five rules
- Carry the definition with the number. Every metric has a legal definition and a collection start-year (stateless 2004, OIP 2018…). Quote the category and year — see the definitions timeline.
- Not reported is not zero. A grey country means "no figure that year", not "no displaced people". Write "not reported", never "zero" or "none".
- Numbers are people, not water. Avoid flood metaphors — "waves", "influx", "swamped" — which cast persecuted people as a natural disaster. Write "X people were forcibly displaced".
- Check the category before comparing years. Who gets counted has kept changing for seventy-five years; dividing today by 1951 measures the change in categories, not the change in the world.
- Estimates never impersonate reports. Nowcasts and recent events (IDU) are labelled estimates; keep the word "estimate" attached, and never mix them into annual reported series.
Desk checklist
- ☐ Metric and year are explicit ("year-end 2024 refugee stock", not "refugee numbers")
- ☐ Source and as-of date given (UNHCR, data as of 2025-12-31)
- ☐ Grey / missing written as "not reported"
- ☐ No flood metaphors
- ☐ A reproducible share link or snapshot id is attached
- ☐ Estimates carry the word "estimate"
Methods-section boilerplate
Paste-ready for a methods section (snapshot id and date are filled in at build time):
Displacement figures are taken from Where They Went (snapshot 21506b7d, data as of 2025-12-31), which republishes UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database and IDMC figures verbatim with content-addressed snapshots. "Not reported" values are preserved as missing, not zero. Metric definitions and their coverage start-years follow UNHCR usage (e.g. OIP from 2018, stateless from 2004); see wheretheywent.lakkev.com/methodology.