Researchers' Attitudes and Behaviour to Data Archiving Policies and Practice is Typified by Low Awareness and Little Planning.

Objective 膒 To assess researchers' attitudes and behaviours in relation to archiving research data and to determine researchers' views about policies relating to data archiving. Design 膒 Survey. Setting 膒 Canadian universities. Subjects 膒 Social sciences and humanities researchers from universities across Canada. Methods 膒 A questionnaire comprising 15 questions was mailed to 175 researchers randomly sampled from a publicly available list of 5,821 individuals who had received grants and awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). From this sample, 75 (43.4%) responded within the five week time-frame stipulated. The questionnaire was constructed using four existing surveys and asked researchers for information about: geographical location, years of research experience, research funding sources, current plans to archive research data, awareness of archiving policies, attitude to mandated research data archiving, effect of mandatory data archiv