Investigation of Non-Academic Data Management Practices to Inform Academic Research Data Management

Abstract

In recent years, the academic research data management (RDM) community has worked closely with funding agencies, university administrators, and researchers to develop best practices for RDM. The RDM community, however, has spent relatively little time exploring best practices used in non-academic environments (industry, government, etc.) for management, preservation, and sharing of data. In this poster, we present the results of a project wherein we approached a number of non-academic corporations and institutions to discuss how data is managed in those organizations and discern what the academic RDM community could learn from non-academic RDM practices. We conducted interviews with 10-20 companies including tech companies, government agencies, and consumer retail corporations. We present the results in the form of user stories, common themes from interviews, and summaries of areas where the RDM community might benefit from further understanding of non-academic data management practices.