A study on scholars’ perceptions and practices of research data management

The trends of digital scholarship, the fourth-paradigm, and data sharing attract attention to issues on research data management (RDM). RDM involves a series of activities throughout the whole research life cycle, including the production, description, storing, backing-up, processing, analyzing, preserving, sharing and reusing of research data. RDM assures scientific research affordable, accessible, fair, re-producible, verifiable, and sustainable. This study explores Taiwanese scholars’ perceptions and practices of RDM via a questionnaire survey. It investigated issues including sources and types of research data, data storage and search, metadata of research data, data management plan (DMP) mandates or requirements, training and support, and data sharing and reuse. Furthermore, it attempts to understand if scholars’ perceptions and practices reveal significant differences regarding subject disciplines, years of research experiences, and profession titles.