Surveying Open Data Practices Kicks Off

  • By Anelda van der Walt
  • July 8, 2020

On 24 March 2020 the core team met online for the first time to kick off with preparation for the project. Surveying Open Data Practices is funded by the International Development Research Centre and hosted by the Institute for Science, Innovation, and Society at Oxford University.

Despite the fact that several surveys exploring the state of open data practices have been conducted in recent years, none has focussed on the African continent specifically. This project will build on work done by the Research Data Alliance’s Interest Group for Surveying Open Data Practices. The general objective of this project is to survey data sharing practices within African research communities. Data sharing practices include curation, archiving, dissemination and re-use strategies. This general objective will be supported by a number of specific objectives that will include:

  • Develop a survey template with questions that are interoperable with other international data sharing surveys
  • Generate a dataset of data sharing practices amongst research communities in 8 African countries
  • Disseminate the research findings to stakeholders via and open dataset, open access publications, a project report, presentations and feedback workshops
  • Share the research findings with international academic networks, such as the Research.

The core project team consist of:

  • Dr Louise Bezuidenhout - Louise hails originally from South Africa and have many years of experience studying and working in the US, UK, and Europe.
  • Mboa Nkoudou Thomas - Thomas is a researcher from Cameroon. He is currently based at the University of Ottawa as a visiting researcher through the Queen Elizabeth II Scholarship Program.
  • Anelda van der Walt - Anelda is based in South Africa but have collaborated widely with researchers across Africa, Europe, the UK, US, and Australia.

Updates about the project will be posted regularly via the blog on the project website and via our Twitter account @SODP_IDRC.