Research Data Management Faculty Practices: A Canadian Perspective.

This paper was presented at the IATUL 2015 "Strategic Partnerships for Access and Discovery" Conference, Hannover, Germany, July 5-9, 2015.The inclusion of a data management plan in applications for publicly funded research grants has become standard practice in the United States, with academic libraries playing an important role in supporting faculty needs. In Canada, requirements for the submission of a data management plan as part of funding applications are a new consideration for faculty. These considerations are crucial in a large and multifaceted research-intensive institution such as the University of Toronto; however, studies focusing on the particular research data practices of engineering faculty are limited. In order to create services that reflect the needs of our faculty, librarians in the University of Toronto Libraries administered a survey to all ranks of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering to determine faculty practice and attitudes toward storing and sharing their research data. Here, the authors present the results of this survey and discuss directions we will take in analysis and comparisons with other surveys. Leveraging intra- and inter-institutional relationships in order to gain a richer understanding of the Canadian research data management landscape has been a key added element in this project. We discuss cross campus collaborations which resulted in adapting the original engineering-focused survey for use in all physical sciences disciplines at University of Toronto, and highlight some of the cross-disciplinary differences encountered. We also discuss ongoing efforts to partner with selected other Canadian schools to generate comparative data for cross analysis