Citing Swiss-AL#
How to cite the platform, a corpus, or an analysis based on a subcorpus.
Every citation of corpus data should identify five things:
who produced the data — ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics
which corpus and the year it was published — the name exactly as it appears in the platform and the year it was published
where it was accessed — the Swiss-AL Platform
when — the date you accessed the corpus or ran the analysis
a permanent identifier
Citing the platform#
To cite Swiss-AL as a whole — the platform, its design, its purpose — cite the descriptive publication rather than the website:
Krasselt, J., Dreesen, P., Stücheli-Herlach, P., Lemmenmeier-Batinić, D., Geckeler, S., Rothenhäusler, K., & Fluor, M. (2026). Swiss-AL: Plattform für Sprachdaten in den Angewandten Wissenschaften. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik, 54(1), 210–229. https://doi.org/10.1515/zgl-2026-2008
Further publications are listed in the Bibliography.
Citing a corpus#
ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics. (Year of corpus creation). Corpus name [Corpus]. Swiss-AL Platform. Retrieved DD Month YYYY, from https://swiss-al.zhaw.ch
For example:
ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics. (2025). DE Organizational Corpus (2010–2024) [Corpus]. Swiss-AL Platform. Retrieved 6 September 2026, from https://swiss-al.zhaw.ch
In running text: (ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics, 2025).
Citing a subcorpus#
A subcorpus cannot be cited as a retrievable resource, because it exists only in your own project. Cite the parent corpus instead, and describe the selection precisely enough that someone could rebuild it:
Analyses are based on a subcorpus of the DE Journalistic Corpus (high reach+regional, 2018–2025) (ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics, 2025), created on 6 September 2026. The subcorpus comprises all documents from daily and online newspapers published between January 2020 and December 2022 containing the keyword Corona (n = 4,312 documents; 2.1 million tokens).
The parent corpus is what makes the work traceable; the description is what makes it reproducible.
What to record while you work#
Note these down when you build a subcorpus, not afterwards — the platform does not keep a log of how a subcorpus was defined.
Record |
Where to find it |
|---|---|
Corpus name, exactly as displayed |
corpus selection menu |
Date the subcorpus was created |
your own notes |
Filter criteria: categories, sources, time span, keywords |
the values you entered in the wizard |
Number of documents and tokens |
|
Tool settings used |
the tool’s own controls, e.g. context window size or number of topics |
The last row matters more than it looks. A Common Pairings result depends on the window size, and a Topics result on the number of topics in the model. Without those settings, a reader cannot reproduce your figures even with the right corpus.
DOIs and SWISSUbase#
Swiss-AL is registered with SWISSUbase, the Swiss repository for research data.
Note
We are currently in the process of adding the individual corpora to SWISSUbase so that each receives its own DOI. This work is ongoing, and not every corpus has a DOI yet.
Once a corpus has one, include it in your citation. The DOI will be listed in Corpora.
ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics. (2025). DE Journalistic Corpus [high reach+regional, 2018-2025] [Corpus]. Swiss-AL Platform. Retrieved 6 September 2026, from https://swiss-al.zhaw.ch. https://doi.org/10.48656/v776-mk85