Differences among Faculty Ranks in Views on Research Data Management

Academic libraries are increasingly engaging in data curation by providing infrastructure and services to support the management of research data on their campus. Efforts to develop these resources can benefit from a greater understanding of the social factors that affect how researchers manage their data during and after their research projects. In particular, the age or amount of experience of researchers is often thought to be an important factor influencing their viewpoints on research data sharing and preservation. In this study, we categorized faculty members who responded to our campus-wide survey on research data management into four ranks—professor, associate professor, assistant professor, and non-tenure track— and analyzed differences in their patterns of survey responses. We found statistically significant differences among faculty ranks in familiarity with funding agency requirements for data management plans, reasons that might prevent data sharing, and interest in potential research data services. These findings reveal key distinctions among different ranks of faculty members in their outlook toward research data management, which can help guide academic librarians and data curation professionals to develop research data services that are tailored to the unique needs of specific populations of researchers.