Chaithra A.M. Research Scholar, Department of Library and Information Science, Bangalore University, Jananabharathi Campus, Bengaluru 560056, India
B. Ramesha President, Association of Teachers Library & Information Science, Department of Library and Information Science, Bangalore University, Jananabharathi Campus, Bengaluru 560056, India
Address for correspondence: B. Ramesha, President, Association of Teachers Library & Information Science, Department of Library and Information Science, Bangalore University, Jananabharathi Campus, Bengaluru 560056, India E-mail: bbramesha@gmail.com
This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt,
and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes
only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
Chaithra AM, Ramesha B. The role of research data management in accelerating scientific discovery. Ind J Lib Inf Sci. 2025;19(1):7-17.
Timeline
Received : December 16, 2025
Accepted : March 05, 2025
Published : April 10, 2025
Abstract
Research data management plays a crucial role in advancing scientific discovery by ensuring the availability, integrity, and accessibility of research data. This article explores the significance of effective research data management practices in accelerating the pace of scientific discovery. It highlights the challenges faced in managing research data and examines the various strategies, tools, and technologies that can be employed to overcome these challenges. The article also discusses the benefits of adopting a proactive approach to research data management, including improved collaboration, data sharing, reproducibility, and the potential for discoveries. Furthermore, it explores emerging trends and future directions in research data management, such as data integration, artificial intelligence, and data-driven discovery. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of establishing institutional policies and support structures to promote effective research data management practices and foster a culture of data sharing and collaboration.
References
1. AlNoamany, Y., & Borghi, J.A. (2018). Towards computational reproducibility: researcher perspectives on the use and sharing of software. PeerJ Computer Science, 4, e163.
2. Alston, J.M., & Rick, J.A. (2021). A beginner’s guide to conducting reproducible research. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 102(2), 1-14.
3. Alvarez, R.M., Key, E.M., & Nunbez, L. (2018). Research replication: Practical considerations. PS: Political Science & Politics, 51(2), 422-426.
4. Amorim, R.C., Castro, J.A., Rocha da Silva, J., & Ribeiro, C. (2017). A comparison of research data management platforms: architecture, flexible metadata and interoperability. Universal access in the information society, 16, 851-862.
5. Austin, C.C., Brown, S., Fong, N., Humphrey, C., Leahey, A., & Webster, P. (2016). Research data repositories: review of current features, gap analysis, and recommendations for minimum requirements. IASSIST quarterly, 39(4), 24-24.
6. Borgman, C.L. (2012). The conundrum of sharing research data. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(6), 1059-1078.
7. Briney, K. (2015). Data Management for Researchers: Organize, maintain and share your data for research success. Pelagic Publishing Ltd.
8. Bruzgiene, R., & Jurgilas, K. (2021). Securing remote access to information systems of critical infrastructure using two-factor authentication. Electronics, 10(15), 1819.
9. Chiware, E.R. (2020). Open research data in African academic and research libraries: a literature analysis. Library Management, 41(6/7), 383-399.
10. Coccia, M. (2021). Evolution and structure of research fields driven by crises and environmental threats: the COVID-19 research. Scientometrics, 126(12), 9405-9429.
11. Corti, L., Van den Eynden, V., Bishop, L., & Woollard, M. (Eds.). (2014). Managing and sharing research data: A guide to good practice. Sage.
12. Costa, L.D.F., Cesar, R.M., & Baptista, R.M. (2020). Scientific data management challenges: from volume to value. Data Science Journal, 19(1), 18.
13. Cox, A.M., Pin field, S., & Rutter, S. (2017). Research data management and libraries: Current activities and future priorities. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 49(3), 294-308.
14. Creamer, A.T., Martin, E.R., Kafel, D., & Wood, S.M. (2014). Research data management and the health sciences librarian. Health Sciences Librarianship, 252-274.
15. Cunha-Oliveira, T., Ioannidis, J.P., & Oliveira, P.J. (2024). Best Practices for Data Management and Sharing in Experimental Biomedical Research. Physiological Reviews.
16. Dadam, P., Lum, V.Y., & Werner, H.D. (1984, August). Integration of time versions into a relational database system. In VLDB (Vol. 84, No. 468, pp. 509-522).
17. Dewan, P., & Choudhary, R. (1992). A highlevel and flexible framework for implementing multiuser user interfaces. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), 10(4), 345-380.
18. Dove, E.S., Joly, Y., Knoppers, B.M., & Zeps, N. (2019). Knoppers B.M., & Zeps N. (2019). Towards an ethics code for Big Data in health and research. Nature Reviews Genetics, 20(7), 384-388.
19. Doyle, J., Viktor, H., & Paquet, E. (2009). Long-term digital preservation: preserving authenticity and usability of 3-D data. International journal on digital libraries, 10, 33-47.
20. Dutch, M. (2008, June). Understanding data deduplication ratios. In SNIA Data Management Forum (Vol. 7).
21. Elgendy, N., & Elragal, A. (2014). Big data analytics: a literature review paper. In Advances in Data Mining. Applications and Theoretical Aspects: 14th Industrial Conference, ICDM 2014, St. Petersburg, Russia, July 16-20, 2014. Proceedings 14 (pp. 214-227). Springer International Publishing.
22. Fabian, B., Ermakova, T., & Junghanns, P. (2015). Collaborative and secure sharing of healthcare data in multi-clouds. Information Systems, 48, 132-150.
23. Feinberg, M., Sutherland, W., Nelson, S. B., Jarrahi, M. H., & Rajasekar, A. (2020). The new reality of reproducibility: The role of data work in scientific research. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW1), 1-22.
24. Flores, J.R., Brodeur, J.J., Daniels, M.G., Nicholls, N., & Turnator, E. (2015). Libraries and the research data management landscape. The process of discovery: The CLIR postdoctoral fellowship program and the future of the academy, 2010, 82-102.
25. Gatchel, R.J., & Okifuji, A. (2006). Evidence based scientific data documenting the treatment and cost-effectiveness of comprehensive pain programs for chronic nonmalignant pain. The Journal of Pain, 7(11), 779-793.
26. Gharaibeh, A., Salahuddin, M.A., Hussini, S.J., Khreishah, A., Khalil, I., Guizani, M., & Al-Fuqaha, A. (2017). Smart cities: A survey on data management, security, and enabling technologies. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 19(4), 2456-2501.
27. Gorgolewski, K.J., & Poldrack, R.A. (2016). A practical guide for improving transparency and reproducibility in neuroimaging research. PLoS biology, 14(7), e1002506.
28. Gray, J., Liu, D.T., Nieto-Santisteban, M., Szalay, A., DeWitt, D.J., & Heber, G. (2005). Scientific data management in the coming decade. Acm Sigmod Record, 34(4), 34-41.
29. Hasselbring, W., & Kao, O. (2013). The future of cloud computing in research. Communications of the ACM, 56(11), 68-76.
30. Hey, T., Tansley, S., & Tolle, K. (2009). The fourth paradigm: data-intensive scientific discovery. Microsoft Research.
31. Ioannidis, J.P., Allison, D.B., Ball, C.A., Coulibaly, I., Cui, X., Culhane, A.C., ... & Gopal-Srivastava, R. (2009). Repeatability of published microarray gene expression analyses. Nature genetics, 41(2), 149-155.
32. Jackson, B. (2018). The changing research data landscape and the experiences of ethics review board chairs: implications for library practice and partnerships. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 44(5), 603-612.
33. Jones, S., Pryor, G., & Whyte, A. (2019). Institutional RDM policy development in the UK: A maturity model. International Journal of Digital Curation, 14(1), 39-58.
34. Keim, D., Kohlhammer, J., Ellis, G., & Mansmann, F. (2010). Mastering the information age solving problems with visual analytics. Eurographics Association.
35. Kennan, M.A., & Markauskaite, L. (2015). Research data management practices: A snapshot in time. International Journal of Digital Curation, 10(2), 69-95.
36. Kim, Y., Stanton, J.M., & Golparvar-Fard, M. (2018). Research data management: A review of current practices. Journal of Business Research, 88, 102-113.
37. Kohonen, T., Kaski, S., Lagus, K., Salojarvi, J., Honkela, J., Paatero, V., & Saarela, A. (2000). Self-organization of a massive document collection. IEEE transactions on neural networks, 11(3), 574-585.
38. Korovessis, P. (2015). Establishing an information security awareness and culture (Doctoral dissertation, Plymouth University).
39. Kowalczyk, S., & Shankar, K. (2011). Data sharing in the sciences. Annual review of information science and technology, 45(1), 247- 294.
40. Leonelli, S. (2013). Integrating data to acquire new knowledge: Three modes of integration in plant science. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science PartC: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 44(4), 503- 514.
41. Li, L. (2012). Data quality and data cleaning in database applications (Doctoral dissertation).
42. Makani, J. (2015). Knowledge management, research data management, and university scholarship: Towards an integrated institutional research data management support-system framework. Vine, 45(3), 344- 359.
43. Mauthner, N.S., & Parry, O. (2013). Open access digital data sharing: Principles, policies and practices. Social Epistemology, 27(1), 47-67.
44. Mayernik, M.S. (2016). Research data and metadata curation as institutional issues. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(4), 973-993.
45. Mazumdar, S., Seybold, D., Kritikos, K., & Verginadis, Y. (2019). A survey on data storage and placement methodologies for cloud-big data ecosystem. Journal of Big Data, 6(1), 1-37.
46. McCormick, M., Liu, X., Jomier, J., Marion, C., & Ibanez, L. (2014). ITK: enabling reproducible research and open science. Frontiers in neuroinformatics, 8, 13.
47. Medina, J., Ziaullah, A.W., Park, H., Castelli, I.E., Shaon, A., Bensmail, H., & El-Mellouhi, F. (2022). Accelerating the adoption of research data management strategies. Matter, 5(11), 3614-3642.
48. Meystre, S.M., Lovis, C., Burkle, T., Tognola, G., Budrionis, A., & Lehmann, C.U. (2017). Clinical data reuse or secondary use: current status and potential future progress. Yearbook of medical informatics, 26(01), 38-52.
49. Miguel, E., Camerer, C., Casey, K., Cohen, J., Esterling, K.M., Gerber, A., ... & Van der Laan, M. (2014). Promoting transparency in social science research. Science, 343(6166), 30-31.
50. Mittal, D., Mease, R., Kuner, T., Flor, H., Kuner, R., & Andoh, J. (2023). Data management strategy for a collaborative research center. GigaScience, 12, giad049.
51. Mondschein, C.F., & Monda, C. (2019). The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in a research context. Fundamentals of clinical data science, 55-71.
52. National Research Council. (1997). Bits of power: Issues in global access to scientific, data. National Academies Press.
53. Nelson, G.S. (2015, April). Practical implications of sharing data: a primer on data privacy, anonymization, and de-identification. In SAS global forum proceedings (pp. 1-23).
54. Patel, D. (2016). Research data management: a conceptual framework. Library review, 65(4/5), 226-241.
55. Perez-Araos, A., Barber, K.D., Eduardo Munive-Hernandez, J., & Eldridge, S. (2007). Designing a knowledge management tool to support knowledge sharing networks. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 18(2), 153-168.
56. Pin field, S., Cox, A.M., & Smith, J. (2014). Research data management and libraries: Relationships, activities, drivers and influences. PLoS one, 9(12), e114734.
57. Powers, S.M., & Hampton, S.E. (2019). Open science, reproducibility, and transparency in ecology. Ecological applications, 29(1), e01822.
58. Procter, R., Halfpenny, P., & Voss, A. (2012). Research data management: Opportunities and challenges for HEIs. Managing research data, 135-150.
59. Qin, J., Lancaster, F.W., & Allen, B. (1997). Types and levels of collaboration in interdisciplinary research in the sciences. Journal of the American Society for information Science, 48(10), 893-916.
60. Ranganathan, S. (2009). Relevance of research data management and data governance in the context of the three Vs of data-intensive science: Volume, variety, and velocity. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems (pp. 371-382).
61. Reyes-Ortiz, J.L., Oneto, L., Samà, A., Parra, X., & Anguita, D. (2018). Transition-aware human activity recognition using smartphones. Neurocomputing, 171, 754-767.
62. Shukla, S., George, J.P., Tiwari, K., & Kureethara, J.V. (2022). Data security. In Data Ethics and Challenges (pp. 41-59). Singapore: Springer Singapore.
63. Siedlok, F., & Hibbert, P. (2014). The organization of interdisciplinary research: modes, drivers and barriers. International Journal of Management Reviews, 16(2), 194-210.
64. Singh, R.K., Bharti, S., & Madalli, D.P. (2022). Evaluation of Research Data Management (RDM) services in academic libraries of India: A triangulation approach. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(6), 102586.
65. Stodden, V., McNutt, M., Bailey, D.H., Deelman, E., Gil, Y., Hanson, B., ... & Taufer, M. (2016). Enhancing reproducibility for computational methods. Science, 354(6317), 1240-1241.
66. Strupler, N., & Wilkinson, T.C. (2017). Reproducibility in the field: Transparency, version control and collaboration on the project panormos survey. Open Archaeology, 3(1), 279- 304.
67. Sun, Y., Zhang, J., Xiong, Y., & Zhu, G. (2014). Data security and privacy in cloud computing. International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, 10(7), 190903.
68. Tenopir, C., Allard, S., Douglass, K., Aydinoglu, A. U., Wu, L., Read, E., & Frame, M. (2011). Data sharing by scientists: Practices and perceptions. PLoS One, 6(6), e21101.
69. Uhlir, P.E. (Ed.). (2012). For attribution: developing data attribution and citation practices and standards: summary of an international workshop. National Academies Press.
70. Van den Eynden, V., Corti, L., Woollard, M., Bishop, L., & Horton, L. (2011). Managing and sharing data; a best practice guide for researchers.
71. Wilkinson, M.D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I.J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., & Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific data, 3(1), 1-9.
72. Williamson, B. (2016). Digital education governance: data visualization, predictive analytics, and ‘real-time’policy instruments. Journal of Education Policy, 31(2), 123-141.
73. Wilson, S., Wallis, J.C., & Paton, N.W. (2017). Scientific research data management: Challenges, opportunities, and strategies. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 50(6), 1-38.
74. Zeng, M.L., Qin, J. (2020). Metadata. United States: American Library Association.
Data Sharing Statement
There are no additional data available.
Funding
This research received no funding.
Author Contributions
All authors contributed significantly to the work and approve its publication.
Ethics Declaration
This article does not involve any human or animal subjects, and therefore does not require ethics approval.
Acknowledgements
Information not provided.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.
About this article
Cite this article
Chaithra AM, Ramesha B. The role of research data management in accelerating scientific discovery. Ind J Lib Inf Sci. 2025;19(1):7-17.
This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt,
and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes
only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt,
and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes
only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.