Research Data Management: The Nigerian Perspectives

Abstract

Management of research data are becoming increasingly important especially as it is being required as a core requirement by journal publishers and funding agencies. Users' experience, as gathered from researchers in five federal universities of technology in Nigeria, showed that knowing the actual data to manage, how, when and where to manage it is quite difficult. This study aimed at developing a computer-based Research Data Management System (RDMS) that would guide researchers, who are actual data producers, on proper data management through their research life cycle so they would come up with a product (datasets) that repositories can accept and manage for future use and reuse. A mixed method approach of qualitative and quantitative instruments involving sequential exploratory strategy was adopted to understand the existing data workflow of researchers. The study also used evolutionary prototyping technique for the software development and the final prototype was subjected to technology acceptance testing using constructs of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. Findings revealed that use of the RDMS improved researchers' confidence in their own research process, better awareness on the benefits of repositories and also had a significant positive effect on their willingness to accept the open data principles.