RDMkit: A research data management toolkit for life sciences

Since presenting a paper at the International Digital Curation Conference 2010 conference entitled ‘An Institutional Approach to Developing Research Data Management Infrastructure’, the University of Oxford has come a long way in developing research data management (RDM) policy, tools and training to address the various phases of the research data lifecycle. Work has now begun on integrating these various elements into a unified infrastructure for the whole university, under the aegis of the Data Management Roll-out at Oxford (Damaro) Project.This paper will explain the process and motivation behind the project, and describes our vision for the future. It will also introduce the new tools and processes created by the university to tie the individual RDM components together. Chief among these is the ‘DataFinder’ – a hierarchically-structured metadata cataloguing system which will enable researchers to search for and locate research datasets hosted in a variety of different datastores from institutional repositories, through Web 2 services, to filing cabinets standing in department offices. DataFinder will be able to pull and associate research metadata from research information databases and data management plans, and is intended to be CERIF compatible. DataFinder is being designed so that it can be deployed at different levels within different contexts, with higher-level instances harvesting information from lower-level instances enabling, for example, an academic department to deploy one instance of DataFinder, which can then be harvested by another at an institutional level, which can then in turn be harvested by another at a national level.The paper will also consider the requirements of embedding tools and training within an institution and address the difficulties of ensuring the sustainability of an RDM infrastructure at a time when funding for such endeavours is limited. Our research shows that researchers (and indeed departments) are at present not exposed to the true costs of their (often suboptimal) data management solutions, whereas when data management services are centrally provided the full costs are visible and off-putting. There is, therefore, the need to sell the benefits of centrally-provided infrastructure to researchers. Furthermore, there is a distinction between training and services that can be most effectively provided at the institutional level, and those which need to be provided at the divisional or departmental level in order to be relevant and applicable to researchers. This is being addressed in principle by Oxford’s research data management policy, and in practice by the planning and piloting aspects of the Damaro Project.

Science is changing: the volume and complexity of data are increasing, the number of studies is growing and the goal of achieving reproducible results requires new solutions for scientific data management. In the field of neuroscience, the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI-Neuro) initiative aims to develop sustainable solutions for research data management (RDM). To obtain an understanding of the present RDM situation in the neuroscience community, NFDI-Neuro conducted a comprehensive survey among the neuroscience community. Here, we report and analyze the results of the survey. We focused the survey and our analysis on current needs, challenges, and opinions about RDM. The German neuroscience community perceives barriers with respect to RDM and data sharing mainly linked to (1) lack of data and metadata standards, (2) lack of community adopted provenance tracking methods, (3) lack of secure and privacy preserving research infrastructure for sensitive data, (4) lack of RDM literacy, and (5) lack of resources (time, personnel, money) for proper RDM. However, an overwhelming majority of community members (91%) indicated that they would be willing to share their data with other researchers and are interested to increase their RDM skills. Taking advantage of this willingness and overcoming the existing barriers requires the systematic development of standards, tools, and infrastructure, the provision of training, education, and support, as well as additional resources for RDM to the research community and a constant dialogue with relevant stakeholders including policy makers to leverage of a culture change through adapted incentivization and regulation.

To ensure the quality and integrity of data and the reliability of research, data must be well documented, organised, and described. This calls for research data management (RDM) education for researchers. In light of 3 ECTS Basics of Research Data Management (BRDM) courses held between 2019 and 2021, we aim to find how a generic level multi-stakeholder training can improve STEM and HSS disciplines’ doctoral students’ and postdoc researchers’ competencies in RDM. The study uses quantitative, descriptive and inferential statistics to analyse respondents’ self-ratings of their competencies, and a qualitative grounded theory-inspired approach to code and analyse course participants’ feedback. Results: On average, based on the post-course surveys, respondents’ (n = 123) competencies improved one point on a four-level scale, from “little competence” (2) to “somewhat competent” (3). Participants also reported that the training would change their current practices in planning research projects, data management and documentation, acknowledging legal and data privacy viewpoints, and data collecting and organising. Participants indicated that it would be helpful to see legal and data privacy principles and regulations presented as concrete instructions, cases, and examples. The most requested continuing education topics were metadata and description, discipline specific cultures, and backup, version management, and storage. Conclusions: Regarding to the widely used criteria for successful training containing 1) active participation during training; 2) demand for RDM training; 3) increased participants’ knowledge and understanding of RDM and confidence in enacting RDM practices; and 4) positive post-training feedback, BRDM meets the criteria. This study shows that although reaching excellent competence in a RDM basics training is improbable, participants become aware of RDM and its contents and gain the elementary tools and basic skills to begin applying sound RDM practices in their research. Furthermore, participants are introduced to the academic and research support professionals and vice versa: Stakeholders will get to know the challenges that young researchers and research students encounter when applying RDM. The study reveals valuable information on doctoral students’ and postdoc researchers’ competencies, the impact of education on competencies, and further learning needs in RDM.

Research data management (RDM) in Jordanian public university libraries: Present status, challenges and future perspectives

Driven by funding and publishing requirements to open and reuse data, Research Data Management (RDM) has become a crucial part of a researcher’s role. However, this key task is often completed by researchers, who sometimes make decisions, without having the necessary support or know-how, resulting in few research datasets being shared. The objective of this study is to identify the challenges in researcher RDM practices that impact the sharing/reusing of research data. Four thematic areas emerge from our coding of the selected literature: (i) alignment of research management and data management, (ii) resourcing, (iii) researcher openness, and (iv) research data governance. Despite the growing field of RDM, there is a limited understanding of RDM practiceshighlighting a requirement for further investigation together with practical tools, decision aids and training to assuage clearly unmet needs. Indeed, this provides an opportunity for the Information Systems (IS) community to better support researchers to implement good RDM practices.

Training up and reaching out : library strategies to coordinate research data management on campus. -- As scholarly products beyond traditional publications are increasingly curated and shared, academic libraries are playing a growing role in supporting research data management (RDM) needs at their institutions. We are helping build collaborations and infrastructure across campus that faculty and students require for modern, increasingly open scholarship. But even with these efforts underway, the question remains: how can we efficiently and effectively integrate RDM into research activities on campus? In this session, a panel of current and recent CLIR postdoctoral fellows working in RDM at five different institutions will share how they are working in a variety of ways to embed RDM practices and support in research workflows. Researchers by training and members of library service groups, CLIR fellows are particularly well situated to understand the scholarly operations of these institutions and the challenges of implementing research support services. Daniels will speak about Vanderbilt's efforts to build connections within the library in order to alert faculty and students to RDM tools and services through workshops and tool-specific trainings. Pickle from Penn State will address her library's Research Working Group, comprising diverse library faculty and staff and aiming to become a community of practice where participants learn from each other and produce formal RDM guidance. Van Gulick will discuss the Carnegie Mellon's Libraries'-coordinated Management Steering Committee, which brings together stakeholders from offices across campus to prioritize RDM at the university and develop optimal resources for their researchers. Calvert will present research on the current level of staff expertise and skill in RDM services at UCLA. Lastly, Simms will present on the California Digital Library's (University of California Curation Center) approach to offering system-wide RDM tools and services to many diverse campuses, which has involved pairing these resources with library-based coordination efforts specific to local needs. Presenters: Morgan Daniels (Vanderbilt University), Ana Van Gulick (Carnegie Mellon University), Sarah Pickle (The Claremont Colleges), Scout Calvert (University of California, Los Angeles), Stephanie Simms (California Digital Library). management plans as a research tool -- As funding agencies increasingly require evidence of sharing and archiving research data, many academic libraries are developing or modifying research data management (RDM) services. These services include outreach regarding funder requirements, assistance with planning for data management, and digital curation services to help researchers manage, share and archive data. These service developments are driving an increasing demand for mechanisms to better understand researcher needs and practices. An analysis of data management plans (DMPs) can uncover important insights into local RDM practices. As a document produced by researchers themselves, DMPs provide a window into researchers' data knowledge, practices, and needs—a formal analysis of DMPs can provide a means to develop data services responsive to the needs of local data producers. To assist librarians in a review of DMPs, the IMLS- funded Data management plans as A Research Tool (DART) Project has developed an analytic rubric to standardize the review of NSF data management plans. Our rubric allows librarians to utilize DMPs as a research tool that can shape decisions about the provision of research data services. It enables librarians who may have no direct experience in applied research or RDM to become better informed about researchers' data. The rubric can be used to identify strengths, gaps and weaknesses in researchers' understanding of data management concepts and practices, as well as existing opportunities and barriers in applying best practices. This panel will consist of data specialists from the project's five research partners. We will describe our methodology for developing the analytic rubric, share the results of DMP analyses at our respective academic institutions, discuss broader trends and observations across institutions, and describe how the results are informing the evolution of services at our respective libraries. Presenters: Susan Wells Parham (Georgia Institute of Technology), Patricia Hswe (Penn State University), Brian Westra (University of Oregon), Amanda Whitmire (Oregon State University)

BackgroundInstitutions, funding agencies and publishers are placing increasing emphasis on good research data management (RDM). RDM lapses in medical science can result in questionable data and cause the public’s confidence in the scientific community to crumble. A fledgling medical school in a young university in Singapore has mandated every funded research project to have a data management plan (DMP). However, researchers’ adherence to their DMPs was unknown until the school embarked on routine data auditing. We hypothesize that research data auditing improves RDM awareness, compliance and reception in the school.MethodsWe conducted surveys with research PIs and researchers before and after data auditing to evaluate differences in self-reported RDM awareness, compliance and reception. As it is mandatory to deposit research data in a central data repository system in the school, we tracked data deposition by each laboratory from 2 weeks before to 3 months after data auditing as a marker of actual RDM compliance.ResultsResearch data auditing had an overall positive effect on self-reported RDM awareness, compliance and reception for both research PIs and researchers. Research PIs agreed more that RDM was important to scientific reproducibility, were more aware of proper RDM, had higher RDM strength in their laboratories and were more compliant with the DMP. Both research PIs and researchers believed data auditing helped them to be more compliant with data deposition in the repository. However, data auditing had no significant impact on laboratories’ data deposition rates over time, which could be due to the short sampling period.ConclusionsResearch PIs and researchers generally felt that data auditing was effective in improving RDM practices. It helped to evaluate their RDM practices objectively, propose corrective actions for RDM lapses and spread awareness of the university’s data management policies. Our findings corroborated other studies in medical research, geosciences, engineering and ethics that data auditing promotes good RDM practices. Hence, we recommend research institutions worldwide to adopt data auditing as a tool to reinforce research integrity.

A Review of:
 Elsayed, A. M., & Saleh, E. I. (2018). Research data management and sharing among researchers in Arab universities: An exploratory study. IFLA Journal, 44(4), 281–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0340035218785196
 Abstract
 Objective – To investigate researchers’ practices and attitudes regarding research data management and data sharing.
 Design – Email survey.
 Setting – Universities in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.
 Subjects – Surveys were sent to 4,086 academic faculty researchers.
 Methods – The survey was emailed to faculty at three Arab universities, targeting faculty in the life sciences and engineering. The survey was created using Google Docs and remained open for five months. Participants were asked basic demographic questions, questions regarding their research data and metadata practices, and questions regarding their data sharing practices.
 Main Results – The authors received 337 responses, for a response rate of 8%. The results showed that 48.4% of respondents had a data management plan and that 97% were responsible for preserving their own data. Most respondents stored their research data on their personal storage devices. The authors found that 64.4% of respondents reported sharing their research data. Respondents most frequently shared their data by publishing in a data research journal, sharing through academic social networks such as ResearchGate, and providing data upon request to peers. Only 5.1% of respondents shared data through an open data repository. Of those who did not share data, data privacy and confidentiality were the most common reasons cited. Of the respondents who did share their data, contributing to scientific progress and increased citation and visibility were the primary reasons for doing so. A total of 59.6% of respondents stated that they needed more training in research data management from their universities.
 Conclusion – The authors conclude that researchers at Arab universities are still primarily responsible for their own data and that data management planning is still a new concept to most researchers. For the most part, the researchers had a positive attitude toward data sharing, although depositing data in open repositories is still not a widespread practice. The authors conclude that in order to encourage strong data management practices and open data sharing among Arab university researchers, more training and institutional support is needed.

PurposeThis study aims to conceptualize the application and management of research data in academic libraries through institutional repositories. The objectives of the study are to determine the role of academic libraries in managing research data, to explore the ethical issues related to research data management (RDM) services and to determine stakeholders involved in the success of RDM.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs a qualitative research design within the interpretive paradigm, using content analysis to explore RDM in academic libraries and institutional repositories. The research aims to determine the role of academic libraries in managing research data, explore ethical issues related to RDM services and identify key stakeholders. Literature was sourced from databases like Emerald Insight, Scopus and Google Scholar, focusing on publications from 2020 to 2024. Case studies from institutions such as the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University illustrated practical RDM implementations. Ethical considerations were strictly adhered to, ensuring proper citation and adherence to RDM guidelines.FindingsThe reviewed literature established the significance of managing research data through institutional repositories while highlighting the research data lifecycle, stakeholders involved in the success of RDM and ethical issues related to RDM services. RDM involves stakeholders such as institutional researchers, government and funding agencies, university leadership and research support units.Research limitations/implicationsThis study demonstrated the importance of effective RDM practices in enhancing transparency, reproducibility and efficiency in academic research. Institutional repositories play a crucial role in preserving and making research data accessible, thereby promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and increasing citation rates.Practical implicationsThe study provided actionable recommendations for academic libraries to support researchers in complying with RDM policies through training, clear guidelines and user-friendly repository interfaces. These strategies enhance the effectiveness of RDM practices and ensure regulatory compliance.Social implicationsThe study underscores the need for regulatory frameworks that promote open science and data sharing while ensuring ethical guidelines for data privacy and informed consent. It also highlights well-managed research data’s economic and commercial benefits, such as facilitating industry–-academia collaboration.Originality/valueThis study is significant as it contributed to the body of knowledge and theoretically motivated how institutional repositories can be of value in reserving research data by highlighting the benefits and significance of sharing research data. A proper RDM increases the opportunities for funders, institutions, publishers and libraries to redesign policies that govern research data sharing.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the knowledge and attitude about research data management, the use of data management methods and the perceived need for support, in relation to participants’ field of research.Design/methodology/approachThis is a quantitative study. Data were collected by an email survey and sent to 792 academic researchers and doctoral students. Total response rate was 18% (N = 139). The measurement instrument consisted of six sets of questions: about data management plans, the assignment of additional information to research data, about metadata, standard file naming systems, training at data management methods and the storing of research data.FindingsThe main finding is that knowledge about the procedures of data management is limited, and data management is not a normal practice in the researcher's work. They were, however, in general, of the opinion that the university should take the lead by recommending and offering access to the necessary tools of data management. Taken together, the results indicate that there is an urgent need to increase the researcher's understanding of the importance of data management that is based on professional knowledge and to provide them with resources and training that enables them to make effective and productive use of data management methods.Research limitations/implicationsThe survey was sent to all members of the population but not a sample of it. Because of the response rate, the results cannot be generalized to all researchers at the university. Nevertheless, the findings may provide an important understanding about their research data procedures, in particular what characterizes their knowledge about data management and attitude towards it.Practical implicationsAwareness of these issues is essential for information specialists at academic libraries, together with other units within the universities, to be able to design infrastructures and develop services that suit the needs of the research community. The findings can be used, to develop data policies and services, based on professional knowledge of best practices and recognized standards that assist the research community at data management.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the existing literature about research data management by examining the results by participants’ field of research. Recognition of the issues is critical in order for information specialists in collaboration with universities to design relevant infrastructures and services for academics and doctoral students that can promote their research data management.

Desde a antiguidade, com a introducao da aplicacao do metodo cientifico para validar o conhecimento, sua producao e os resultados de pesquisas passaram a ser pautados na troca de ideias e sugestoes entre os pares, no compartilhamento de informacoes que necessitavam passar pelo crivo dos membros da comunidade cientifica. A partir da evolucao da ciencia e dos aparatos tecnologicos que passaram a coletar maior quantidade de informacoes para as pesquisas cientificas, os dados emergem como produto essencial para o avanco do conhecimento cientifico necessarios para a validacao dos resultados de qualquer estudo. Os dados de pesquisa se apresentam em varias formas e devem ser contextualizados dentro das disciplinas ou areas as quais pertencem. Nesse sentido, esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar as praticas e necessidades informacionais dos pesquisadores (docentes, discentes e tecnico-administrativos em Educacao vinculados ao Mestrado ou ao Doutorado) dos cursos de Pos-Graduacao da Universidade Federal do Ceara (UFC), concernentes ao gerenciamento de dados de pesquisa e a Ciencia Aberta. Para tal, delinearam-se os seguintes objetivos especificos: analisar a percepcao dos pesquisadores sobre a gestao de dados de pesquisa e a Ciencia Aberta; averiguar quais as praticas e as necessidades informacionais destes pesquisadores referentes a estas tematicas; propor um Programa de Gestao de Dados de Pesquisa (PGDP) para a UFC com o objetivo de sugerir uma Politica de Gestao de Dados de Pesquisa; sugerir a criacao de servicos de apoio e suporte ao pesquisador na UFC; desenvolver acoes de educacao e informacao com vistas a testar um piloto de curso online como parte integrante do programa. Realizou-se um levantamento exaustivo a partir de buscas realizadas por meio do software Publish or Perish, Portal de Periodicos da CAPES, Wizdom.ai e Twitter. Como estrategia metodologica, utilizou-se a triangulacao de metodos – Teoria Fundamentada em Dados e a Netnografia, alem das tecnicas de pesquisa analise documental e a observacao participante. Para coletar os dados adotou-se o questionario e a entrevista, bem como o uso do diario de campo eletronico e o caderno de laboratorio eletronico para as anotacoes, registros de notas de campo e na construcao de memorandos. Os dados foram tratados por uma abordagem qualitativa com o uso do software Atlas.ti para a construcao das categorias. Os resultados demonstram que em relacao as praticas e estrategias de armazenamento dos pesquisadores, o computador pessoal e a nuvem sao os mais utilizados para manter seus arquivos e dados de pesquisas, embora a maioria tenha revelado nao ter uma frequencia de backup de seus arquivos por usar o servico de sincronizacao automatica da nuvem. Sobre as praticas de documentacao da pesquisa com a elaboracao de um Plano de Gestao de Dados (PGD), entre todos os respondentes do questionario apenas uma pessoa elaborou um PGD, enquanto no grupo de entrevistados nenhum chegou a usar o PGD para essa finalidade. Sobre o compartilhamento, os entrevistados afirmaram ter realizado algum tipo de compartilhamento, seja de informacoes ou dados de pesquisa, e, quando nao compartilham, os motivos declarados foram: desconhecimento, por nao saber como fazer ou por esbarrarem em questoes eticas, legais e de integridade da pesquisa. Diante do exposto, conclui-se que o pesquisador tem um papel fundamental na Gestao dos Dados de Pesquisa, pois adotar essa postura representa garantia da qualidade e integridade da pesquisa, alem de colaborar para as boas praticas na ciencia. Ademais, a literatura mostra que o bibliotecario tem sido o profissional mais recomendado para auxiliar os pesquisadores nesse processo. Finalmente, esta pesquisa traz como contribuicao a percepcao dos pesquisadores sobre os dados de pesquisa e a Ciencia Aberta, alem da sugestao de uma proposta de Programa de Gestao de Dados de Pesquisa (PGDP) para a UFC que se concentra no desenvolvimento de politicas, diretrizes, acoes de educacao e informacao, produtos, servicos e gestao dos dados de pesquisa na universidade.

This study examines librarians' views on research data management values, skills, infrastructure, challenges, and incentive factors, as well as RDM practices at Pakistani university libraries. This study observed university libraries in Punjab province and Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city, on research data management (RDM) understanding and use. The study inspects librarians' knowledge, abilities, infrastructure, and RDM challenges. We gathered the data from a poll of university chief librarians in Punjab province and Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan. We designed an online questionnaire to survey 114 university library professionals. We collected data from 101 chief librarians or head librarians in degree-granting institutions located in Punjab province and Islamabad, the capital. We descriptively analysed the data using SPSS v. 20. The results show knowledge and education gaps, budgetary constraints, cultural barriers, and technological challenges. Punjab province and Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city, require focused training, infrastructure improvements, and open data promotion to enhance research data management. The study results confirmed that efficient research data management is crucial for maintaining research integrity, reproducibility, storage, dissemination, and conservation. Librarians need technological skills, data management strategy, legal and ethical knowledge, and instructional ability, according to the study. It also highlights digital archives, data management tools, and network security for research data management. We identified issues with information professionals' skills, library infrastructure, human resources, and technology. These findings suggest that university administrators and donor organisations must regularly and effectively offer LIS professionals training and development. RDM resources, data analysis and visualization tools, data storage, security, research data sharing platforms, documentation and metadata, access permissions, and data literacy training should be considered. This is Pakistan's first study to investigate RDM techniques and their use in university libraries. The research aims to improve research data management procedures and regulations at higher education institutions in Punjab province and Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city.

Monash University recognizes that if research data is better managed, more discoverable, available for reuse and exposed to relevant communities it will contribute to increased research impact, enhanced research practice (including collaboration) and improved education outcomes. Monash has taken on the challenge of developing research data management (RDM) using a multifaceted, multilevel and strategic approach. This has included leadership and participation in large Australian Federal Government initiatives at the same time as using ‘little steps’ approaches within the institution. Monash has led national projects to prototype and develop RDM infrastructure, assumed responsibility as the lead agency of the governmentfunded Australian National Data Service (ANDS), formed an institutional structure for RDM governance, established a Strategy and Strategic Plan for 2012–15 and an RDM policy with associated procedures and guidelines, delivered programmes for RDM skills development, established a petabyte data store and developed and deployed a range of disciplinespecific and versatile solutions for the management of research data and associated metadata. The university continues to identify RDM as critically significant to its research performance and to the fulfilment of compliance requirements and community expectations. All members of the Monash community share responsibility to improve RDM in a coordinated and integrated way; to support this, the university has made ongoing appointments into research data management roles while also seconding librarians and information technology staff into shorterterm positions to build capability and expertise. This chapter explores the university's work in the period from 2006 to 2013 and examines the issues and challenges to be resolved when planning and implementing effective RDM. It describes in some detail the characteristics of Monash's organizational approach to RDM, explores both the nontechnical and technical components of Monash's RDM infrastructure, looks at what developments are anticipated and outlines Monash's strategy to promote sustainable RDM infrastructure.

PurposeConsidering that research data is increasingly hailed as an important raw material for current and future science discoveries, many research stakeholders have joined forces to create mechanisms for preserving it. However, regardless of generating rich research data, Africa lags behind in research data management thereby potentially losing most of this valuable data. Therefore, this study was undertaken to investigate the research data management practices at a Malawian public university with the aim to recommend appropriate data management strategies.Design/methodology/approachThe study is inspired by the pragmatic school of thought thereby adopting quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Quantitative data was collected using a questionnaire from 150 researchers and 25 librarians while qualitative data was collected by conducting an interview with the Director of Research.FindingsResearchers are actively involved in research activities thereby generating large quantities of research data. Although researchers are willing to share their data, only a handful follow through. Data preservation is poor because the university uses high risk data storage facilities, namely personal computers, flash disks, emails and external hard drives. Researchers and librarians lacked core research data-management competencies because of the lack of formal and information training opportunities. Challenges that frustrate research data-management efforts are many but the key ones include absence of research data management policies, lack of incentives, lack of skills and unavailability of data infrastructure.Research limitations/implicationsThe study's findings are based on one out of four public universities in the country; hence, the findings may not adequately address the status of research data management practices in the other universities.Practical implicationsConsidering that the university under study and its counterparts in Malawi and Africa in general operate somewhat in a similar economic and technological environment, these findings could be used as a reference point for other universities intending to introduce research data management initiatives.Originality/valueWith seemingly limited studies about research data management in Africa and particularly in Malawi, the study sets the tone for research data management debates and initiatives in the country and other African countries.

PurposeThe concept of research data management (RDM) is new in Zimbabwe and other developing countries. Research institutions are developing research data repositories and promoting the archiving of research data. As a way of creating awareness to researchers on RDM, the purpose of this paper is to determine how researchers are managing their research data and whether they are aware of the developments that are taking place in RDM.Design/methodology/approachA survey using a mixed method approach was done and an online questionnaire was administered to 100 researchers in thirty research institutions in Zimbabwe. Purposive sampling was done by choosing participants from the authors of articles published in journals indexed by Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science. Interviews were done with five top researchers. The data was analysed using NVIVO. The results were presented thematically. The questionnaire was distributed using the research offices of the selected 30 research institutions. There was a 75% response rate.FindingsThe findings indicated that all the researchers are aware of the traditional way of managing research data. A total of 70% of the respondents are not aware of the current trends in RDM services, as they are keeping their data on machines and external hard drives, while 97.3% perceive RDM services as useful, as it is now a requirement when applying for research grants. Librarians have a bigger role to play in creating awareness on RDM among researchers and hosting the data repositories for archiving research data.Practical implicationsResearch institutions can invest in research data services and develop data repositories. Librarians will participate in educating researchers to come up with data management plans before they embark on a research project. This study also helps to showcase the strategies that can be used in awareness creation campaigns. The findings can also be used in teaching RDM in library schools and influence public policy both at institutional and national level.Social implicationsThis study will assist in building capacity among stakeholders about RDM. Based on the findings, research institutions should prioritise research data services to develop skills and knowledge among librarians and researchers.Originality/valueFew researches on RDM practices in Zimbabwe were done previously. Most of the papers that were published document the perception of librarians towards RDM, but this study focused mainly on researchers’ awareness and perception. The subject is still new and people are beginning to research on it and create awareness amongst the stakeholders in Zimbabwe.