Archiving Scientific Data: Needs and Challenges for Chemistry Researchers

Scientific data preservation is an ongoing challenge for the information sciences. This study focuses on one subgroup, chemistry. Our goal is to elicit data practices and opinions on sharing data from chemistry researchers at the institution of UNC-Chapel Hill to inform the development of an IR. To achieve this goal, we conducted a survey of faculty and students. Findings from the 31 participants (a response rate of 10.3%) revealed that chemists use data repositories infrequently. Participants were most comfortable sharing data with students, followed by collaborators and researchers in their own discipline. The researchers surveyed did not express interest in an institutional repository, although certain sub-groups - data repository users, researchers comfortable sharing data, and biological chemists - showed more interest. Of researchers that used data repositories, most had done so through the journal publishing process, which could provide an alternative way to preserve research data in chemistry.