Faculty practices and perspectives on Research Data Management

Our university library has a long history of supporting the data acquisition and analysis needs of campus researchers. To address the emerging trend in academic libraries to support research data management needs, and to focus our development efforts on the most effective services, we initiated a campus assessment in fall of 2012 to solicit input from faculty conducting research across all disciplines. The library and institutional research office invited science, social science, and humanities faculty to complete a brief online survey of their data management practices and perspectives, including questions on data management plans, documentation and metadata, data sharing and preservation. This presentation will share findings from our analysis of the survey data, including general and discipline specific responses. Preliminary analyses show that the majority of our researchers are not very familiar with funders' requirements and do not share their data with people outside of their research group. Although most researchers do not use disciplinary data repositories, many are somewhat or very interested in this option. The results of our survey give insight into researchers' data management practices and help identify services with the greatest potential to effectively support the creation, preservation, and dissemination of research data within the university.