Research Data Management Services in Southern Africa: A Readiness Survey of Academic and Research Libraries

Abstract

The paper reports on a study on the readiness of university and research libraries inSouthern Africa to provide research data management services in their institutions. The aimof the study was to determine how ready university and research libraries are in leading andparticipating in research data management services. The study also determined the readinessof libraries to engage in stakeholder collaborative programmes to provide institution-wideservices and systems for research data management. Various aspects relating to researchdata management services readiness that were included in the study are: data supportservices, archiving, organisational structures, staffing and training, funding, outreach andpartnerships, and challenges and opportunities of research data management serviceprovision. A questionnaire was distributed to fifty-nine university librarians and librarydirectors in university and research libraries in eight southern Africa countries of Botswana,Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The resultsshow that research data management services are still in their early stages of developmentwith various countries and institutions at different levels of readiness for service provisionand with some countries and institutions not yet ready to implement any type of services. Asmall number of institutions have policies in place or are planning to implement some in thenear future. Existing institutional repositories are also seen as a possible extension of datamanagement services. Recruitment of specialised personnel to manage data managementprojects is taking place in some institutions, and many are providing skills to existing librarystaff for the new services. It is recommended that there is a need to advocate for awareness ofresearch data management within institutions with academic and research libraries taking aleading role in spearheading data management and providing training and the technicalsupport needed to store and retrieve research output and data sets. Keywords: Academic libraries; Research data management; Research libraries; Southern Africa.