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Data sharing is increasingly being recognized as an essential component of scholarly research and publishing. Sharing data improves results and propels research and discovery forward. Given the importance of data sharing, the purpose of the study is to unveil the present scenario of research data repositories (RDR) and sheds light on strategies and tactics followed by different countries for efficient organization and optimal use of scientific literature.

The data for the study is collected from registry of RDR (re3data registry) (re3data.org), which covers RDR from different academic disciplines and provides filtration options “Search” and “Browse” to access the repositories. Using these filtration options, the researchers collected metadata of repositories i.e. country wise contribution, content-type data, repository language interface, software usage, metadata standards and data access type. Furthermore, the data was exported to Google Sheets for analysis and visualization.

The re3data registry holds a rich and diverse collection of data repositories from the majority of countries all over the world. It is revealed that English is the dominant language, and the most widely used software for the creation of data repositories are “DataVerse”, followed by “Dspace” and “MySQL”. The most frequently used metadata standards are “Dublin Core” and “Datacite metadata schema”. The majority of repositories are open, with more than half of the repositories being “disciplinary” in nature, and the most significant data sources include “scientific and statistical data” followed by “standard office documents”.

The main limitation of the study is that the findings are based on the data collected through a single registry of repositories, and only a few characteristic features were investigated.

The study will benefit all countries with a small number of data repositories or no repositories at all, with tools and techniques used by the top repositories to ensure long-term storage and accessibility to research data. In addition to this, the study provides a global overview of RDR and its characteristic features.

The purpose of this paper is to collect the global status data of digital repositories automatically and analyzed it by building a database. For analysis criteria the following were utilized: first, China, Japan and Republic of Korea (CJK) repository operational status; second, language of the repository content; third, repository type, fourth, repository of CJK by subject area; fifth, the amount of repository content; and sixth, repository software.

OpenDOAR and ROAR services were used as the sources to obtain the information on the digital repository. Those sources are representative services that provide the digital repository registration services and are used as sources in a variety of studies. A six kinds of data analysis criteria: first, CJK repository operational status; second, language of the repository content; third, repository type; fourth, repository of CJK by subject area; fifth, the amount of repository content; and sixth, repository software were utilized.

First, CJK is operating 288 repositories (8 percent compared to the world, 42.2 percent compared to Asia). Second, the repositories that provide Japanese, Chinese and Korean contents are 5.57 percent, 4.14 percent and 0.72 percent, respectively. Third, the repository operated by the government is inadequate in Asia. Fourth, in Korea and Japan, the repositories in the field of humanities and social sciences appeared all in the top 10. Fifth, Korea provides 1,342,845 cases of contents (0.81 percent compared to the global). Sixth, the “DSpace” software is most widely utilized as a repository system and it is the same in CJK.

This results of this study can be used to identify the repository status in Korea compared to global and to CJK, and can be utilized as a basis to determine the direction of the repository promotion and policy in Korea and also to administer the national R&D budget.

The purpose of this paper is to survey how research data are governed at repositories in Japan by deductively establishing a governance typology based on the concept of openness in the context of knowledge commons and empirically assessing the conformity of repositories to each type.

The fuzzy-set ideal type analysis (FSITA) was adopted. For data collection, a manual assessment was conducted with all Japanese research data repositories registered on re3data.org.

The typology constructed in this paper consists of three dimensions: openness to resources (here equal to research data), openness to a community and openness to infrastructure provision. This paper found that there is no case where all dimensions are open, and there are several cases where the resources are closed despite research data repositories being positioned as a basis for open science in Japanese science and technology policy.

This is likely the first construction of the typology and application of FSITA to the study of research data governance based on knowledge commons. The findings of this paper provide practitioners insight into how to govern research data at repositories. The typology serves as a first step for future research on knowledge commons, for example, as a criterion of case selection in conducting in-depth case studies.

The purpose of this study was to understand the landscape of Indian research data repositories (RDRs) indexed in the re3data.org. The study analysed the metadata elements of Indian RDRs to identify their disciplinary orientations, typology, standards adopted, foreign collaborations, etc. The study ascertained the current status of the Indian RDRs by visiting their respective websites and tried to identify and map the exact disciplinary orientation of each RDR.

The study used “content analysis” of the metadata elements extracted from re3data.org along with the information analysis of the respective websites of the registered RDRs.

The study identified that only 80% of the Indian RDRs listed by the re3data.org is currently active. Most of the Indian RDRs are hosted by the central and state governments and are almost equally distributed among Life Sciences, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences domains. The data provided by the re3data.org for the Indian RDRs are not complete and up-to-date.

The findings indicate the presence of a good number of inactive RDRs in the re3data.org. The study suggests using a revised version of the DFG subject classification scheme or considering a standard classification scheme for subject indexing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that critically analysed the metadata values extracted and moved further to identify the current status of Indian RDRs.

RDR has become an essential academic infrastructure in an atmosphere that facilitates the openness of research output granted by public research funds. This study aims to understand operational status of 152 Asian data repositories on re3data and cluster repositories into four groups according to their operational status. In addition, identify the main subject areas of RDRs in Asian countries and try to understand what topic correlations exist between data archived in Asian countries.

This study extracts metadata from re3data and analyzes it in various ways to grasp the current status of research data repositories in Asian countries. The author clusters the repositories into four groups using hierarchical cluster analysis according to the level of operation. In addition, for identifying the main subject areas of RDRs in Asian countries, extracted the keywords of the subject field assigned to the each repository, and Pathfinder Network (PFNET) analysis is performed.

About 70 per cent of the Asian-country repositories are those where licenses or policies are declared but not granted permanent identifiers and international-level certification. As a result of the subject domain analysis, eight clusters are formed centering on life sciences and natural sciences.

The research output in developing countries, especially non-English-speaking countries, tends not to be smoothly circulated in the international community due to the immaturity of the open-access culture, as well as linguistic and technical problems. This study has value, in that it investigates the status of Asian countries’ research data management and global distribution infrastructure in global open-science trends.

In recent years, a large number of data repositories have been built and used. However, the extent to which scientific data are re-used in academic publications is still unknown. The purpose of this paper is to explore the functions of re-used scientific data in scholarly publication in different fields.

To address these questions, the authors identified 827 publications citing resources in the Dryad Digital Repository indexed by Scopus from 2010 to 2015.

The results show that: the number of citations to scientific data increases sharply over the years, but mainly from data-intensive disciplines, such as agricultural, biology science, environment science and medicine; the majority of citations are from the originating articles; and researchers tend to reuse data produced by their own research groups.

Dryad data may be re-used without being formally cited.

The conservatism in data sharing suggests that more should be done to encourage researchers to re-use other’s data.

The purpose of this study is to explore current practices, challenges and technological needs of different data repositories.

An online survey was designed for data repository managers, and contact information from the re3data, a data repository registry, was collected to disseminate the survey.

In total, 189 responses were received, including 47% discipline specific and 34% institutional data repositories. A total of 71% of the repositories reporting their software used bespoke technical frameworks, with DSpace, EPrint and Dataverse being commonly used by institutional repositories. Of repository managers, 32% reported tracking secondary data reuse while 50% would like to. Among data reuse metrics, citation counts were considered extremely important by the majority, followed by links to the data from other websites and download counts. Despite their perceived usefulness, repository managers struggle to track dataset citations. Most repository managers support dataset and metadata quality checks via librarians, subject specialists or information professionals. A lack of engagement from users and a lack of human resources are the top two challenges, and outreach is the most common motivator mentioned by repositories across all groups. Ensuring findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data (49%), providing user support for research (36%) and developing best practices (29%) are the top three priorities for repository managers. The main recommendations for future repository systems are as follows: integration and interoperability between data and systems (30%), better research data management (RDM) tools (19%), tools that allow computation without downloading datasets (16%) and automated systems (16%).

This study identifies the current challenges and needs for improving data repository functionalities and user experiences.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2021-0204

In the present era, research data is a concern for researchers, as they are trying to find new ways to communicate their research findings and conclusions to other researchers in order to increase visibility and credibility. BRICS nations are fast emerging economies and contribute significantly in research output. This study makes an effort to analyze and explore the role of BRICS nations towards open access research data repository registered with Registry of Research Data Repositories.

The data were gathered from re3data repository, and the search was limited to BRICS nations. The data were further analyzed and tabulated as per set parameters, namely, country-wise distribution, types of contents, subject coverage and language diversity.

The findings depict that in terms of strength, India has the highest number of data repositories, thereby achieved the first rank among BRICS nations, and South Africa has the least number of data repositories, whereas in terms of content type and subject coverage, India again is leading among BRICS nations. The English language is used by repositories as the main language of the interface.

The study helps to understand the development of research data repositories by BRICS nations. The study is further beneficial to researchers, as Registry of Research Data Repository provides a single platform to access repositories from various disciplines. Readily available data saves time, money and efforts of researchers and helps the researcher in completing their research activity in a very short span of time.

The paper has investigated open access data repositories of BRICS nation that has not been attempted earlier. This gives readers comprehensive overview of research data repositories developed in fast emerging economies of the global. The paper can be very helpful for information managers, OA promoters and education and research policy makers to devise plans and policy bearing in mind the evolving research channels in emerging economies.

This study investigates differences and commonalities in data production, sharing and reuse across the widest range of disciplines yet and identifies types of improvements needed to promote data sharing and reuse.

The first authors of randomly selected publications from 2018 to 2019 in 20 Scopus disciplines were surveyed for their beliefs and experiences about data sharing and reuse.

From the 3,257 survey responses, data sharing and reuse are still increasing but not ubiquitous in any subject area and are more common among experienced researchers. Researchers with previous data reuse experience were more likely to share data than others. Types of data produced and systematic online data sharing varied substantially between subject areas. Although the use of institutional and journal-supported repositories for sharing data is increasing, personal websites are still frequently used. Combining multiple existing datasets to answer new research questions was the most common use. Proper documentation, openness and information on the usability of data continue to be important when searching for existing datasets. However, researchers in most disciplines struggled to find datasets to reuse. Researchers' feedback suggested 23 recommendations to promote data sharing and reuse, including improved data access and usability, formal data citations, new search features and cultural and policy-related disciplinary changes to increase awareness and acceptance.

This study is the first to explore data sharing and reuse practices across the full range of academic discipline types. It expands and updates previous data sharing surveys and suggests new areas of improvement in terms of policy, guidance and training programs.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-08-2021-0423.