The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)'s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP)'s Data Citation Service was provided by the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) during its sixth phase, CMIP6, and is part of the CMIP data infrastructure, which falls under the governance of the WCRP Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) Infrastructure Panel (WIP). Looking forward to CMIP7, DKRZ is unable to continue to provide the citation service and expand it to further WCRP projects. Community engagement, including the recent CMIP6 Community Survey, has highlighted the importance of data citations for the CMIP datasets for data providers, their funders, and for data users within the CMIP community and downstream. Due to the loss of an available citation service for CMIP7 and beyond, the CMIP Panel set up a Task Team to discuss and clarify the optimal approach to the data citation service in early 2023. This was one of several Task Teams that were established to support the definition and planning of CMIP7. The key aim of this Task Team was to develop the concept of a sustainable data citation service, which Can support CMIP7 and other WCRP projects and MIPs, Is better integrated into the CMIP infrastructure, Provides improved services for data providers and data users based on the CMIP survey results. Shares effort and costs among several DOI-providing institutions increasing resilience of the service. In this White Paper, the Task Team outlines the recommendations they made to the CMIP Panel and WGCM Infrastructure Panel on how to design a sustainable data citation service.