UBC Research Data Management Survey: Health Sciences

In 2016, the Canadian federal funding agencies introduced the Tri-Agency Statement of Principles on Digital Data Management, which advocates for developing data management plans (DMPs) and making data available for future research. A data management plan addresses questions about: research data types and formats, metadata standards, ethics and legal compliance, data storage and reuse, assignment of data management responsibilities, and resource requirements. With anticipation that DMPs will be increasingly required in grants applications, librarians at University of British Columbia surveyed researchers about their RDM practices and needs in three phases, each of which targets different disciplines: 1) the Sciences and Engineering (fall 2015), 2) the Social Sciences and Humanities (fall 2016), and 3) the Health Sciences (spring 2017). The surveys illuminate disciplinary differences in RDM, and will inform the University in developing infrastructure and services to support researchers in RDM. This report describes findings from the third survey at UBC targeting researchers in the Health Sciences.