Research Data Management in the Croatian Academic Community: A Research Study

This paper presents the results of an empirical research study of Croatian scientists’ use and management of research data. This research study was carried out from 28 June 2023 until 31 August 2023 using an online questionnaire consisting of 28 questions. The answers of 584 respondents working in science were filtered out for further analysis. About three-quarters of the respondents used the research data of other scientists successfully. Research data were mostly acquired from colleagues from the same department or institution. Roughly half of the respondents did not ask other scientists directly for their research data. Research data are important to the respondents mostly for raising the quality of research. Repeating someone else’s research by using their research data is still a problem. Less than one-third of the respondents provided full access to their research data mostly due to their fear of misuse. The benefits of research data sharing were recognized but few of the respondents received any reward for it. Archiving research data is a significant problem for the respondents as they dominantly use their own computers prone to failure for that activity and do not think about long-term preservation. Finally, the respondents lacked deeper knowledge of research data management.