Data Preservation, Sharing and Reuse Practises among Agricultural Researchers in Tanzania

Ph.D Dissertations

Agricultural research data preservation, sharing, and use practices are crucial in enhancing research activities in Tanzania. However, little is known about the preservation, sharing, and use/reuse practises among agricultural researchers in the country. The main purpose of this study was to investigate data preservation, sharing, and use/reuse practises among agricultural researchers in Tanzania. Specifically, the study, focused on data sources for accessibility and reuse practises among agricultural researchers in Tanzania; analysed the communication channels and their potential applicability in enhancing agricultural research data sharing among agricultural researchers in Tanzania; examined the data preservation practises for enhancing agricultural research data usage among researchers in Tanzania, and examined the factors influencing agricultural researchers’ data sharing practises for enhanced accessibility of agriculture research data in Tanzania. The current study employed cross-sectional survey methods to investigate data preservation, data-sharing, and use/reuse practises among agricultural researchers in Tanzania. The study was conducted in Agricultural Research Institutions (TARI) centres and Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) as an academic and agricultural research institution. The study used both quantitative and qualitative approaches in data collection and analysis. The study involved 227 agricultural researchers who were randomly selected from the study area. Purposively, eleven (11) key informants were selected, namely eleven Directors/Managers from selected TARI centres and one (1) Director of Postgraduate Studies, Research, Technology Transfer & Consultancy for SUA. Also, two Focus Group Discussions which included six participants from Mikocheni TARI centre and IIonga TARI centre) were conducted in these two centres. The data collection involved the use of multiple data-gathering techniques (questionnaires and interviews and focus group discussions). Quantitative data were analysed with the help of the Statistical Product Service Solution (SPSS) Version 22 while thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. Descriptive statistics techniques were calculated to establish the demographic characteristics of respondents, data sources and use/reuse practises, existing communication channels and their applicability in data sharing, data preservation practices in enhancing data usage, and factors influencing agricultural researchers’ data sharing practises for enhanced accessibility of agriculture research data in Tanzania. The findings indicate that agricultural researchers use/reuse data that are accessed from different other sources. Findings reveal that the majority of researchers 95.1% use/reuse data in writing scientific papers. Research data are also used in writing technical reports and project proposals. Similarly, results from Binary Logistic Regression Analysis revealed that factors influencing researchers in the use/reuse of research data were not statistical significance meaning that all factors (independent variables) contributed equally to influence researchers in actual data use/reuse. Furthermore, findings reveal that both mediated and non-mediated channels exist and were used as data-sharing channels. The majority of researchers more than 80% preferred to use non-mediated channels. Moreover, findings show that some mediated data-sharing channels were least used, including social media platforms, institutional repositories and funding agency databases. Through cross-tabulation, findings indicate that the extent of data sharing channel usage at SUA was higher than at the other research institutions investigated. Some channel usage also has statistical significance including meetings and conferences p=0.005, website p=0.001, workshop p=0.049, telephone as interpersonal mediated p=0.045, and technical report p=0.045. This meant that these channels were preferred for use across all agricultural research institutions. Findings also indicate that more than fifty percent of the respondents agreed that timely delivery, the cost for the use of a channel and convenience to a channel were among the factors influencing researchers in their channel selection. Likewise, findings reveal that the majority of researchers preferred to preserve their data using different storage devices such as field notebooks, desktop/personal computers, and institutional libraries. Moreover, the findings indicate that agricultural researchers preferred to preserve their data for more than six years after the end of the project. The findings also indicate the factors that influence researchers in the choice of data preservation methods were: easy to reach, cost-effective storage devices, support to use the devices, adequate infrastructure for data preservation, and reliable power supply. Furthermore, the findings indicate that some factors that influence researchers in data sharing indicating statistical significance included perceived community benefit, perceived ability to share, data sharing norms, and funding agency policies. The findings also indicate that the lack of data sharing policy and the absence of data preservation/management infrastructures, for example, data repositories were the challenges facing agricultural researchers in data sharing. Based on these findings it can be concluded that agricultural researchers share their data with fellow close research fellows. Agricultural researchers use both mediated and non- mediated data-sharing channels. The main factors motivating researchers to share their data include perceived community benefits, perceived ability to share, data-sharing norms and funding agency policy. Also, it can be concluded that there is yet a great role of research data preservation in enhancing data usage among researchers in Tanzania.