Maturing research data services and the transformation of academic libraries

Abstract

Purpose A major development in academic libraries in the last decade has been recognition of the need to support research data management (RDM). The purpose of this paper is to capture how library research data services (RDS) have developed and to assess the impact of this on the nature of academic libraries. Design/methodology/approach Questionnaire responses from libraries in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK and USA from 2018 are compared to a previous data set from 2014. Findings The evidence supports a picture of the spread of RDS, especially advisory ones. However, future ambitions do not seem to have seen much evolution. There is limited evidence of organisational change and skills shortages remain. Most service development can be explained as the extension of traditional library services to research data. Yet there remains the potential for transformational impacts, when combined with the demands implied by other new services such as around text and data mining, bibliometrics and artificial intelligence. A revised maturity model is presented that summarises typical stages of development of services, structures and skills. Research limitations/implications The research models show how RDS are developing. It also reflects on the extent to which RDM represents a transformation of the role of academic libraries. Practical implications Practitioners working in the RDM arena can benchmark their current practices and future plans against wider patterns. Originality/value The study offers a clear picture of the evolution of research data services internationally and proposes a maturity model to capture typical stages of development. It contributes to the wider discussion of how the nature of academic libraries are changing.

Research data management policy and practice in Chinese university libraries

“…In the last decade, some libraries have actively studied RDM and tried to engage in it without policy, have directly gone to the technicallevel services; supported data catalogues, citation, and metadata, and provided data repository, analysis, and mining services. Where libraries have developed RDS, they seem to have started with technology rather than policy and this is in contrast to the pattern of development suggested by Cox et al's (2019) maturity model. One possible reason is that technologies are relatively easy to learn and can be "copied" from country to country.…”

“…In comparison, as early as 2016, 80 universities in the United Kingdom already had an institutional RDM policy (Horton, 2016), and a significant number of libraries and their institutions in Australia and the Netherlands have research data policy in place or to be implemented within a year (Cox et al, 2017). Secondly, compared to the previous study by Cox et al (2019), the level of services offered by Chinese institutions was lower in every instance. The low response rate to the survey was also suggestive of a lack of awareness of RDM, as confirmed by comments in the interviews, where library directors often showed little engagement with the topic.…”

“…The follow-up questionnaire was sent to the same list of universities in order to confirm the website analysis results and explore the real situation in libraries. An international questionnaire conducted and reported by Cox et al (2019) was adapted into a Chinese language version, with the main questions retained to enable comparison. The revised questionnaire, composed of 23 questions, was piloted with five librarians from mainland China and then distributed to the target university libraries via invitation emails sent between June and November 2019.…”

“…The last 15 years have seen an increasing international recognition of the importance of RDM in government and funder policies, triggered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Principles and guidelines for access to research data from public funding (OECD, 2007). In response to this emerging policy framework, institutional services have advanced at the local level (Tenopir, Pollock, Allard, & Hughes, 2016;Tenopir et al, 2017;Cox et al, 2017;Cox et al, 2019). As an important stakeholder, libraries are closely involved in RDM in the United Kingdom and North America (Pryor, Jones & Whyte, 2014), and they provide advisory and technical RDS, which together define a model of mature RDS (Cox et al, 2019).…”

“…In the context of this major government initiative, this article seeks to examine the changing status of RDM in China, by addressing the following questions: The study is based on analysis of websites, a survey, and interviews. Data from previous work on libraries' international development of RDS conducted in 2014 (Cox, Kennan, Lyon, & Pinfield, 2017) and repeated in 2018 (Cox, Kennan, Lyon, Pinfield, & Sbaffi, 2019) are used to provide comparative context.…”