Potential opportunities and risks of sharing agricultural research data in Tanzania
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
White Rose
Abstract
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 has significant positive benefits among
researchers such as increased 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
include researchers’ fears that data will be scooped, poached or misused (Onyancha, 2016); unreliable
electric power; lack of funding to support research data sharing activities; absence of institutional
governmental support for data management; perceived lack of benefits for data sharing (Leonelli,
Rappert and Bezuidenhout, 2018); and others. However, in Tanzania research data sharing is relatively
new, thus, there are no governmental agency(ies) 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 encouraged 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.
Description
Journal article
Keywords
Research data sharing, open data repositories, research data policy, agricultural institutions, Tanzania
Citation
https://doi.org/10.29173/iq997