International Open Access Week is an annual scholarly communication event which focuses on Open Access and related topics and takes place every year in the last week of October. The theme for this year’s Open Access week was “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion”. In light of this theme, the Library and Information Service decided to put the spotlight on Open Data as an aspect of Open Science and inform the research community of the importance of Open Data as well as to showcase the growth of SUNScholarData, the institutional Research Data repository managed by the Library.
Open Data is a sub-component that exists within the broader context of Open Research. It owes its existence largely to the increasingly prominent role which research data have come to play in the world of scholarly research. The impetus behind making research data openly accessible has been a desire to democratise the data so that any person can access such data, free of constraints such as paywalls. However, the need itself goes beyond this and is linked to certain positive benefits for the rest of society. Examples of this include but are not limited to the following: Improvements in the quality of research data; compliance with certain ethical and legal requirements; a reduction in the duplication of data collection efforts; an increase in the diffusion of information and ultimately knowledge throughout society and the broader dissemination of research data.
In recognising the important role that research data repositories can play in facilitating the dissemination of open scientific data, Stellenbosch University (SU) set up and launched its very own institutional research data repository, SUNScholarData, on 12 August 2019.
The first dataset was deposited in SUNScholarData on 7 August 2019. Since then, the number of deposits has increased at a modest rate and now totals 84 datasets. Some 21 of these have been published and are openly accessible. The datasets have been viewed 9 564 times and generated 1 559 downloads since August 2019.
In addition to permitting the deposit of research data, SUNScholarData facilitates the bulk-linkage to supplementary data originally submitted to academic publishers. Currently this is only possible with supplementary data associated with the Public Library of Science’s (PLOS) journals. On 16 September 2020, a total of 3 508 PLOS datasets were linked to SUNScholarData. These datasets cover a period from 2006-2020 and provide a broad view of openly accessible research data that span several academic disciplines.
SUNScholarData provides several benefits which can be harnessed by SU researchers. The greatest benefit experienced by those who have published research data on SUNScholarData is the increased visibility of their data. As SUNScholarData is visible and accessible online it is certainly better than storing research data on local as well as external hard drives. Furthermore, the repository stores research data securely in accordance with recognised ISO standards. The research datasets are curated prior to publication, thus ensuring quality and by extension trustworthiness. SUNScholarData facilitates compliance with research funder mandates, which may require that the research data associated with funded research be shared publicly upon the completion of projects. SUNScholardata also facilitates compliance with the policies of academic publishers, which sometimes mandate that the research data underpinning publication be published via research data repositories.
Researchers interested in learning more about SUNScholarData are welcome to contact the Manager: Research Data Services of the Library at ssimango@sun.ac.za.
Samuel Simango