Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania
Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to examine the potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania identified in the existing research literature. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved a review of the literature on research data sharing practices....
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology
2021-12-01
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| Series: | IASSIST Quarterly |
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| Online Access: | https://iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/article/view/997 |
| _version_ | 1827161898206887936 |
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| author | Anajoyce Samuel Katabalwa Jo Bates Pamela Abbott |
| author_facet | Anajoyce Samuel Katabalwa Jo Bates Pamela Abbott |
| author_sort | Anajoyce Samuel Katabalwa |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description |
Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to examine the potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania identified in the existing research literature.
Design/methodology/approach: The study involved a review of the literature on research data sharing practices.
Findings: The findings indicate that, research data sharing have significant positive benefits among researchers such as increase high research impact; enhancing international community collaboration among researchers with same interests; improving scientific transparency and accuracy of data (Rappert and Bezuidenhout, 2016); increasing research output whereby a single dataset can be used to generate more than one article by different authors; and many more. The risks hampering data sharing practices includes researchers’ fears that data will be scooped, poached or misused (Onyancha, 2016); unreliable electric power; lack of fund to support research data sharing activities; absence of institutional governmental support for data management; perceived lack of evidence benefits (Leonelli, Rappert and Bezuidenhout, 2018); and others. However, in Tanzania research data sharing is relatively new, thus, no any governmental agency mandating or encouraging research data sharing; therefore, there is no research data management; no research open data repositories and no research data sharing policy at any agricultural institution in Tanzania. The study recommends that agricultural researchers should be sensitized to share their data, research data policy and data repositories should also be established to support data sharing practices in Tanzania.
Originality and usefulness: From the available literature, this has been the first time that an effort has been made to examine the potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania. The study could be used by agricultural institutions and other institutions to assess the researchers’ needs in supporting research data sharing. Also, it can be used by the government and institutions to see the need of establishing open data repositories and open data policies to support research data sharing.
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| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T10:18:15Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-050953b1c53d45a2a0f6caab95007911 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2331-4141 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-03-21T00:36:14Z |
| publishDate | 2021-12-01 |
| publisher | International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IASSIST Quarterly |
| spelling | doaj.art-050953b1c53d45a2a0f6caab950079112024-08-03T06:41:04ZengInternational Association for Social Science Information Service and TechnologyIASSIST Quarterly2331-41412021-12-01453-410.29173/iq997Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in TanzaniaAnajoyce Samuel Katabalwa0 Jo Bates1Pamela Abbott 2Sokoine University of AgricultureUniversity of SheffieldUniversity of Sheffield Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to examine the potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania identified in the existing research literature. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved a review of the literature on research data sharing practices. Findings: The findings indicate that, research data sharing have significant positive benefits among researchers such as increase high research impact; enhancing international community collaboration among researchers with same interests; improving scientific transparency and accuracy of data (Rappert and Bezuidenhout, 2016); increasing research output whereby a single dataset can be used to generate more than one article by different authors; and many more. The risks hampering data sharing practices includes researchers’ fears that data will be scooped, poached or misused (Onyancha, 2016); unreliable electric power; lack of fund to support research data sharing activities; absence of institutional governmental support for data management; perceived lack of evidence benefits (Leonelli, Rappert and Bezuidenhout, 2018); and others. However, in Tanzania research data sharing is relatively new, thus, no any governmental agency mandating or encouraging research data sharing; therefore, there is no research data management; no research open data repositories and no research data sharing policy at any agricultural institution in Tanzania. The study recommends that agricultural researchers should be sensitized to share their data, research data policy and data repositories should also be established to support data sharing practices in Tanzania. Originality and usefulness: From the available literature, this has been the first time that an effort has been made to examine the potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania. The study could be used by agricultural institutions and other institutions to assess the researchers’ needs in supporting research data sharing. Also, it can be used by the government and institutions to see the need of establishing open data repositories and open data policies to support research data sharing. https://iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/article/view/997Research data sharingOpen data repositoriesresearch data policyagricultural institutionsTanzania |
| spellingShingle | Anajoyce Samuel Katabalwa Jo Bates Pamela Abbott Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania IASSIST Quarterly Research data sharing Open data repositories research data policy agricultural institutions Tanzania |
| title | Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania |
| title_full | Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania |
| title_fullStr | Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania |
| title_full_unstemmed | Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania |
| title_short | Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania |
| title_sort | potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in tanzania |
| topic | Research data sharing Open data repositories research data policy agricultural institutions Tanzania |
| url | https://iassistquarterly.com/index.php/iassist/article/view/997 |
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