Research Productivity, Visibility, and Impact at the University of Namibia

Author(s):  
Trywell Kalusopa ◽  
Patiswa Zibani ◽  
Ronald Kanguti ◽  
Anna Leonard

The global competitiveness drive, pursuit for relevance, and search for true identity continues to challenge many African universities in their quest to achieve the delicate balance of preserving national indigenous repute and worldwide visibility. For decades, universities have occupied a centre stage in this balancing act through research productivity, evaluation, and impact. The benefits of university research and innovation are varied, persuasive, well-documented, and acknowledged as benchmarks for the visibility, sustenance, and relevance of any modern university. This chapter examines the research profile of the University of Namibia (UNAM) by looking at its current research productivity, visibility, and impact in the SADC region and beyond. Using bibliometric and altimetric analysis from Web of Science, Scopus, and SciVal databases, and the institutional repository, the chapter underscores the fragility but evolving UNAM's research performance output and highlights open access and research data management as keys to enhancing institutional research productivity and visibility.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rozália Zeller ◽  
Szabolcs Hoczopán ◽  
Gyula Nagy

Following the national and international trends in mid-2020 the Klebelsberg Kuno Library of the University of Szeged has also started to deal with the issue of research data management. After thorough self-training the library staff studied the Hungarian and international best practices of managing research data. We tried to assess the needs of the institutional research data management habits and the opinion of the researchers of SZTE with a comprehensive questionnaire. We compiled a comprehensive questionnaire to assess the needs of our researchers, learn what they’re thinking about RDM and what kind of practices regarding RDM already exist in the research community. By evaluating the questionnaire we have determined the areas in which the library could provide professional assistance where there was a real need among researchers. Keeping in mind the needs of the research community of University of Szeged we have decided to develop the following services: copyright consulting, RDM trainings for PhD students, theoretical and methodological assistance for RDM, write institutional FAIR data management recommendations. The last four services have been successfully implemented. We also wrote a feasibility study to assess the possibilities of developing our own institutional data repository.


2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Rumsey ◽  
Neil Jefferies

The University of Oxford is preparing systems and services to enable members of the university to manage research data produced by its scholars. Much of the work has been carried out under the Jisc-funded Damaro project. This project draws together existing nascent services, adds new systems and services to ‘fill the gaps’ and provides a wide-ranging infrastructure. Development comprises four parallel strands: endorsement of a university research data management policy; training and guidance in research data management; technical infrastructure; and future sustainability. A key element of the technical infrastructure is DataFinder, a catalogue of Oxford research data outputs. DataFinder’s core purposes are to record the existence of Oxford datasets, enable their discovery, and provide details of their location. DataFinder will record metadata about Oxford research data, irrespective of location, discipline or format, and is viewed by the university as a crucial hub for the university’s Research Data Management (RDM) infrastructure.


2016 ◽  
Vol Volume 112 (Number 7/8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Koopman ◽  
Karin de Jager ◽  
◽  

Abstract Digital data archiving and research data management have become increasingly important for institutions in South Africa, particularly after the announcement by the National Research Foundation, one of the principal South African academic research funders, recommending these actions for the research that they fund. A case study undertaken during the latter half of 2014, among the biological sciences researchers at a South African university, explored the state of data management and archiving at this institution and the readiness of researchers to engage with sharing their digital research data through repositories. It was found that while some researchers were already engaged with digital data archiving in repositories, neither researchers nor the university had implemented systematic research data management.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Martindale

<p>This presentation introduces academics and researchers to the value of formal and informal technologies in promoting the visibility and discoverability of their online researcher identity. Topics covered in the presentation include Open Access, Creative Commons licensing, Institutional Repositories, Research Data Management, ORCID, Research Collaboration & Social Scholarship, Researcher impact &citation analysis, Social Media, and Altmetrics.</p>


2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Norman ◽  
Kate Valentine Stanton

This paper explores three stories, each occurring a year apart, illustrating an evolution toward a strategic vision for Library leadership in supporting research data management at the University of Sydney. The three stories describe activities undertaken throughout the Seeding the Commons project and beyond, as the establishment of ongoing roles and responsibilities transition the Library from project partner to strategic leader in the delivery of research data management support. Each story exposes key ingredients that characterise research data management support: researcher engagement; partnerships; and the complementary roles of policy and practice.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlheinz Pappenberger

>> See video of presentation (33 min.)On 29th July 2014 the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, has launched an e-science initiative to build up a powerful, efficient and innovative information infrastructure for all universities, research institutions and universities of applied science of the county of southwest Germany. With the overall budget of 3.7 million euro action plans within the five areas licensing, digitalization, research data management, open access and virtual research environments shall be worked out within the next years.Within this framework an 18-month project has been launched at the beginning of 2014 to evaluate the needs of services and support libraries and IT service centres should offer for researchers in the area of research data management. In this “bwFDM communities” named project full time key accounters have been established at all 9 universities of the county (Freiburg, Heidelberg, Hohenheim, Karlsruhe, Konstanz, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Tuebingen and Ulm; among them national and international highly ranked universities). The task of the key accounters is to identity concrete needs and requirements of all research groups working with research data (in a broad sense including all areas of science, social science and humanities) at each of the nine universities as well as possible solutions by conducting semi-structured personal interviews and documenting them in the form of user stories. As a result issues of importance and requirements will be identified, categorized and finalized to recommendations for concrete action plans.The presentation will give an overview of the first results of the project, thereby also highlighting the roles libraries and IT service centres are expected to play from the researcher´s point of view. Furthermore the presentation will point out the response of the University of Konstanz Library to the rising awareness of the importance of research data within the University Executive, showing the special efforts the University of Konstanz Library undertakes to support researchers in their research data management so far and to build up more and more expertise in the area of research data management. One step had been the set-up of a disciplinary data repository in the field of ornithology (Movebank data repository).


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy E Koshoffer ◽  
Keloni Parks

This article discusses increasing student engagement surrounding data management and how the University of Cincinnati Libraries tried to engage students with a poster session for its Data Day event in 2017.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Cox ◽  
Laurian Williamson

The Data Asset Framework methodology has evolved to provide a model for institutional surveys of researchers’ data practices and attitudes. At least 13 such studies have been published in the UK and internationally. The aim of this paper is to analyse the results from the 2014 DAF survey at the University of Sheffield and to reflect on the comparability of this with previous published studies. 432 researchers responded to the survey representing 8% of the target population. Researchers at Sheffield collect multiple types of data and a significant number have accumulated very large amounts of data. Data was backed up on a diverse basis. Only 25% of respondents had a DMP. Eighteen months after its creation most respondents were still not aware of the local research data management policy. Fortunately, most respondents were favourable to the idea of training in many aspects of RDM. Researchers had generally had no experience of sharing data, but attitudes were positive, both in terms of a significant minority seeing a lack of data sharing as an obstacle to the progress of research and also desire to reuse the data of others and share their own with a broad group of researchers. Comparison of the Sheffield results with those of other institutions is difficult particularly because of the divergence of questions asked in the different studies. Nevertheless, in terms of data practices and identifying training priorities there are common patterns. This institutional survey showed less positive attitudes to data sharing than the results of cross-institutional studies, such as conducted by Tenopir et al. (2011).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helene N. Andreassen ◽  
Erik Lieungh

In this episode, we are discussing how to teach open science to PhD students. Helene N. Andreassen, head of Library Teaching and Learning Support at the University Library of UiT the Arctic University of Norway shares her experiences with the integration of open science in a special, tailor-made course for PhD's that have just started their project. An interdisciplinary, discussion-based course, "Take Control of Your PhD Journey: From (P)reflection to Publishing" consists of a series of seminars on research data management, open access publishing and other subject matters pertaining to open science. First published online February 26, 2020.


Author(s):  
Shirley D. Dangan

Research productivity is the topmost concern of most universities. Based on the survey conducted, only few of the faculty at Palawan State University had published research in the last six years. This study aimed to identify the predictors of research productivity to provide administrators with research-based information that will serve as the basis in the formulation of institutional research policies that will help increase research productivity. The researcher used descriptive research design and involved the 277 faculty and 12 administrative officials of Palawan State University, Puerto Princesa City, Philippines as respondents. Triangulated data gathering techniques which include questionnaire, interview and focus group discussion validated by a panel of experts were used. A parametric test such as multiple regression was used in the statistical analysis of data. This study revealed that gender, rank, and number of teaching hours predicted research productivity. Interviews and focus group discussions disclosed that some of the faculties were self-motivated to do research while others were motivated by points for promotion and load reduction. The university must organize research training and mentoring on the research process; give remuneration; reduce the workload of faculty who conducts research; enhance faculty’s self-motivation to do research and set guidelines for promotion of outstanding researchers. KEYWORDS - Education, predictors of research productivity, HEIs, descriptive design, PhilippinesResearch productivity is the topmost concern of most universities. Based on the survey conducted, only few of the faculty at Palawan State University had published research in the last six years. This study aimed to identify the predictors of research productivity to provide administrators with research-based information that will serve as the basis in the formulation of institutional research policies that will help increase research productivity. The researcher used descriptive research design and involved the 277 faculty and 12 administrative officials of Palawan State University, Puerto Princesa City, Philippines as respondents. Triangulated data gathering techniques which include questionnaire, interview and focus group discussion validated by a panel of experts were used. A parametric test such as multiple regression was used in the statistical analysis of data. This study revealed that gender, rank, and number of teaching hours predicted research productivity. Interviews and focus group discussions disclosed that some of the faculties were self-motivated to do research while others were motivated by points for promotion and load reduction. The university must organize research training and mentoring on the research process; give remuneration; reduce the workload of faculty who conducts research; enhance faculty’s self-motivation to do research and set guidelines for promotion of outstanding researchers. KEYWORDS - Education, predictors of research productivity, HEIs, descriptive design, Philippines


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document