Exploring Collaborative Partnership in Research Data Management: A study of Selected University Libraries in Kenya

Abstract

The study focuses on research data management, which involves a wide range of data lifecycle related responsibilities and activities. It intended to assess the appropriate collaborative partnerships and areas of collaboration to enhance RDM tasks such metadata production, analysis, storage, sharing, and reuse. The study employed descriptive quantitative design to collect data from 35 participants purposefully chosen from Egerton and Kenyatta University. The Cronbach Alpha test was used to assess the questionnaire's reliability. A Cronbach Alpha of 0.78 ascertain the instrument reliability. The collected data was analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences. The study findings were presented using tables for understanding. The findings reveal that collaboration among, librarians, researchers, IT professionals, legal experts, research directorates, and academic units could help in achieving a flowless research data management practice. Also, the collaboration areas were identified including defining of data repository criteria, reusing research data, choosing data repositories, exchanging data across disciplines, and data sharing within and outside discipline. However, in data renting period, participant had low perception. The study recommends further research on each collaboration partners to ascertain the duties and responsibility for flowless adoption of research data management practices. Also, an exploration of what should be included in each collaboration areas could help shed light to academic institution libraries on specific aspects for successful implementing/adoption of RDM practices.