ARL Releases Two New Reports: “Making Research Data Publicly Accessible: Estimates of Institutional & Researcher Expense” & “Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative: Research Methodology 2022–2023 Surveys and Interviews”

From the Association of Research Libraries (ARL):

In 2021 the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and six academic institutions involved in the Data Curation Network (DCN) were awarded a US National Science Foundation (NSF) EAGER grant to conduct research, develop models, and collect costing information for public access to research data across from funded researchers in five disciplinary areas: environmental science, materials science, psychology, biomedical sciences, and physics. This project is the Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative.

Today the RADS Initiative has released two reports: Making Research Data Publicly Accessible: Estimates of Institutional & Researcher Expenses and the supplemental report, Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative: Research Methodology 2022–2023 Surveys and Interviews.

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This report presents data on the average yearly cost of DMS activities for institutional units, as well as direct DMS expenses incurred by researchers per funded research project. These expenses were then analyzed together, showing an average combined overall cost of $2,500,000 (with total institutional expenses ranging from approximately $800,000 to over $6,000,000).

Read the Complete Publication Annoucement

Report 1

Title

Making Research Data Publicly Accessible: Estimates of Institutional & Researcher Expense
28 pages; PDF. 

Authors

Alicia Hofelich Mohr, Jake Carslon, Lizhao Ge, Joel Herndon, Wendy Kozlowski, Jennifer Moore, Jonathan Petters, Shawna Taylor, and Cynthia Hudson Vitale

DOI: 10.29242/report.radsexpense2024

Abstract

Academic institutions have made significant investments to support public access to research data requirements, yet little to no data about these services, infrastructure, and costs currently exist or are widely shared. For public access to research data to be optimized, funding agencies, institutions, and organizations must better understand the investments made by institutions and individual researchers toward meeting these requirements.

This mixed-methods study was funded by the US National Science Foundation (grant #2135874). The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and six research-intensive academic institutions—Cornell University, Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, and Washington University in St. Louis—used surveys and interviews to provide an initial examination of institutional expenses for public access to research data. Due to the breadth and heterogeneity of research data and funding, we scoped this work to three US federal funding agencies (Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation) and five disciplinary areas (biomedical sciences, environmental science, materials science, physics, and psychology).

Report 2

Title

Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative: Research Methodology 2022–2023 Surveys and Interviews
40 pages; PDF.

Authors

Shawna Taylor, Alicia Hofelich Mohr, Jonathan Petters, Jake Carslon, Lizhao Ge, Joel Herndon, Wendy Kozlowski, Jennifer Moore, and Cynthia Hudson Vitale

DOI: 10.29242/report.radsmethodology2023

Abstract

This report describes the methodology of research conducted during the first stage of the Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative, funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), from 2021 to 2023, and should be considered supplemental to the additional final research reports (white papers) produced as a result of this research. As part of the RADS Initiative, institutional administrators and funded researchers were surveyed in 2022 and interviewed in 2023 on details related to research data sharing support services and practices, and their corresponding expenses. While the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is the administrative home of the RADS Initiative, the research was conducted with participants at the following institutions: Cornell University, Duke University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Associations and Organizations, Data Files, Funding, Interviews, Journal Articles, Libraries, News, Reports