This report, based on responses from 104 faculty from research universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, presents faculty evaluations of data archiving, curation and management services from leading research universities.
The study focuses on faculty from data intensive fields such as medicine, chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, statistics and mathematics, engineering, economics and finance, sociology and political science and other data-intensive fields.
The 183-page report presents detailed faculty satisfaction evaluations with many specific data-oriented products and services, including: metadata for data archiving, data repositories, data repository capabilities in following researcher instructions, help in finding datasets, preserving datasets, publicizing the availability of datasets, helping scholars re-utilize data from past studies, quality of data manipulation software, help in data cleaning and many other areas of data management. Scholars also cite the libraries and universities that they most admire for their data management services.
Data in the report is broken out by many personal and institutional criteria including: age, gender, tenure status, teaching load, subject specialty and academic title of the survey participant, and country of origin, public/private status, and world university ranking of the university affiliated with the survey participant, among other variables.
Just a few of the report’s many findings
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63% of those sampled believed that their university maintained a digital data repository.
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Concerning library services for the archiving and preserving of data sets, in the overall sample, 11% were Quite Satisfied, 17.5% Satisfied, 16.5% Somewhat Satisfied, and 13% Dissatisfied; 43% did not respond.
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The proportion of faculty reporting that their university maintains a database or directory listing available datasets is inversely related to the annual tuition of the institution: lowest, 58% of respondents, vs. highest, 42%.
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The overall level of satisfaction with academic library patron support for documenting of data collection history and methods, was highest from faculty in Australia/New Zealand, with over 60% satisfied or very satisfied.