Research Data Management Practices Across the Research Data Lifecycle and Their Potential for Collaboration in an International Higher Education Alliance

Abstract

Proper research data management facilitates collaboration and promotes research progress through the synergetic process of publishing and reusing research data. Despite these advantages, extant literature reveals that researchers often struggle to manage their research data. In this article, we investigate the relation between research data management practices and collaboration in a context that was made to spark or intensify collaboration—a European Universities alliance. We conducted 39 semi-structured interviews addressing the whole research data lifecycle predominantly with researchers, but also support staff, from six universities that were or were shortly to become part of a European Universities alliance. Our findings show that researchers’ practices affect their collaboration in various ways. For example, we find that sharing data within research teams constitutes an obstacle to collaboration due to international differences and technical impediments. Publishing data openly is also associated with certain reservations, such as a lack of knowledge. Furthermore, doubts toward existing data hinder researchers from reusing other researchers’ data. International higher education alliances such as European Universities alliance should keep these impediments in mind and offer solutions which foster collaboration.