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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 study aims to investigate the utilisation of open research data repositories (RDRs) for storing and sharing research data in higher learning institutions (HLIs) in Tanzania.

A survey research design was employed to collect data from postgraduate students at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Arusha, Tanzania. The data were collected and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. A census sampling technique was employed to select the sample size for this study. The quantitative data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), whilst the qualitative data were analysed thematically.

Less than half of the respondents were aware of and were using open RDRs, including Zenodo, DataVerse, Dryad, OMERO, GitHub and Mendeley data repositories. More than half of the respondents were not willing to share research data and cited a lack of ownership after storing their research data in most of the open RDRs and data security. HILs need to conduct training on using trusted repositories and motivate postgraduate students to utilise open repositories (ORs). The challenges for underutilisation of open RDRs were a lack of policies governing the storage and sharing of research data and grant constraints.

Research data storage and sharing are of great interest to researchers in HILs to inform them to implement open RDRs to support these researchers. Open RDRs increase visibility within HILs and reduce research data loss, and research works will be cited and used publicly. This paper identifies the potential for additional studies focussed on this area.