Setting up a National Research Data Curation Service for Qatar: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Over the past decade, Qatar has been making considerable progress towards developing a sustainable research culture for the nation. The main driver behind Qatar’s progress in research and innovation is Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development (QF), a private, non-profit organization that aims to utilise research as a catalyst for expanding, diversifying and improving the country’s economy, health and environment. While this has resulted in a significant growth in the number of research publications produced by Qatari researchers in recent years, a nationally co-ordinated approach is needed to address some of the emerging but increasingly important aspects of research data curation, such as management and publication of research data as important outputs, and their long-term digital preservation. Qatar National Library (QNL), launched in November 2012 under the umbrella of QF, aims to establish itself as a centre of excellence in Qatar for research data management, curation and publishing to address the research data-related needs of Qatari researchers and academics. This paper describes QNL’s approach towards establishing a national research data curation service for Qatar, highlighting the associated opportunities and key challenges.

Data archiving for dissemination within a Gulf nation

“…In order to build capacity, students should receive training data management as well as sound exploratory data analysis techniques. Similar to Shaon, Straube and Chowdhury (2017), in Qatar and other countries in the region, research institutions need to provide training opportunities to students. Besides, data centers should encourage researchers to participate in data management related programmes as a way of retooling as well as keeping up to date with the evolving statistical programming software.…”

“…Organizations beyond government (private foundations, companies, research centers) are beginning to sponsor data collection, and these institutions require a review of existing data to inform and supplement their efforts on behalf of their stakeholders (Elsayed and Saleh, 2018). Although findings from a recent study by Shaon, Straube, and Chowdhury (2017) highlight deficiencies in capabilities, particularly skills required to execute data sharing activities, efforts to address the lack of data sharing are underway, beginning with the establishment of the first open data archives for survey research in the region. Below we give a brief description of the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI), an independent survey research organization that recently established a data archive and how it has approached promoting data sharing given the contextual challenges that the organization faces.…”