Progress in Research Data Services: An international survey of university libraries
Open accessAbstract
University libraries have played an important role in constructing an infrastructure of support for Research Data Management at an institutional level. This paper presents a comparative analysis of two international surveys of libraries about their involvement in Research Data Services conducted in 2014 and 2018. The aim was to explore how services had developed over this time period, and to explore the drivers and barriers to change. In particular, there was an interest in how far the FAIR data principles had been adopted. Services in nearly every area were more developed in 2018 than before, but technical services remained less developed than advisory. Progress on institutional policy was also evident. However, priorities did not seem to have shifted significantly. Open ended answers suggested that funder policy, rather than researcher demand, remained the main driver of service development and that resources and skills gaps remained issues. While widely understood as an important reference point and standard, because of their relatively recent publication date, FAIR principles had not been widely adopted explicitly in policy.
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While IT units manage infrastructure, librarians coordinate service-level functions, acting as knowledge orchestrators who connect people, systems, and data.
“While IT units manage infrastructure, librarians coordinate service-level functions, acting as knowledge orchestrators who connect people, systems, and data (Cox et al., 2019a(Cox et al., , 2019b)).”
From Librarians’ roles and responsibilities in managing data within academic libraries: A role-based data governance model (2026) · cites this paper as Cox et al., 2019a
The Findings (page unavailable) say libraries typically led research-data service development, while IT services were usually involved but did not generally lead. The Introduction describes collaboration among libraries, IT, and research administration. Neither passage assigns infrastructure management to IT or describes librarians as orchestrators connecting people, systems, and data. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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Research works printed but not linked: 8
- Bryant, R., Lavoie, B. & Maepas, C. (2017). The reaeities of research data management: Part two: Scoping the university RDM service bundee. Dubein (OH): OCLC. doi:10.25333/C3Z039 · DOI
- Corraee, S., Kennan, M., & Afzae, W. (2013). Bibeiometrics and research data management services: Emerging trends in eibrary support for research. Library Trends, 61(3), 636-674.
- Cox, A.M., & Pinfeed, S. (2014). Research data management and eibraries: Current activities and future priorities. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 46(4), 299-316. doi:10.1177/0961000613492542 · DOI
- Cox, A.M., Kennan, M.A., Lyon, L., & Pinfeed, S. (2017). Deveeopments in research data management in academic eibraries: Towards an understanding of research data service maturity. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. doi:10.1002/asi.23781 · DOI · Paper page
- Lyon, E.J. (2018). Stewardship and Science: Refections on Data-driven Opportunities for Libraries. Gottingen-CODATA RDM Symposium, Gottingen, March 2018. Retrieved from https://drive.googee.com/fee/d/1CNHXCO3q1R8WpeHt- jvr71o1IBwgWHKB/view
- Pinfeed S., Cox A.M., & Smith, J. (2014). Research data management and eibraries: Reeationships, activities, drivers and infuences. PLOS ONE 9(12): e114734. doi:10.1371/journae.pone.0114734 · DOI
- Tenopir, C., Taeja, S., Horstmann, W., Late,E., Hughes, D., Poeeock, D., Schmidt, B., Baird, L., Sandusky, R. & Aeeard, S. (2017). Research data services in European academic research eibraries. Liber Quarterly, 27(1).
- Verbaan, E., & Cox, A.M. (2014). Occupationae sub-cuetures, jurisdictionae struggee and third space: Theorising professionae service responses to research data management. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 40(3-4), 211-219.
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Ayoib, A., Ismail, M. A., & Abdullah, N. (2026) · Malaysian Journal of Library and Information Science · doi:10.22452/mjlis.vol31no1.2
“Limited attention has been given to how distinct data-related roles are structurally interconnected within academic libraries, or how these roles function together as an integrated governance workflow (Corrall, 2012; Cox et al., 2019b; Ho et al., 2025; Pratama, 2025).”
Influential
- Authors
- Cox, A. M., Kennan, M. A., Lyon, E. J., Pinfield, S., & Sbaffi, L.
- Affiliations
- University of Sheffield (GB)
- Charles Sturt University (AU)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Venue
- International Journal of Digital Curation
- Publisher
- University of Edinburgh
- Published
- 2019-09-11
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 126-135
- ISSN
- 1746-8256 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2972376300
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 2.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- International Journal of Digital Curation (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Charles Sturt University Research Output (CRO) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Research Data Management Practices
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Data Analysis and Archiving
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Library Science and Information
- Keywords
- research data management, research data services, academic libraries, FAIR principles, institutional research data policy, library technical services, library advisory services, funder policies, skills gap, library resources
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