Research Data Management Practices

Research Data Management Practices is a research topic within Information Systems. Science Explorer counts 17k research works in it since 1950. 10.1% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

This cluster of papers revolves around the practices, challenges, and opportunities of data sharing and stewardship in scientific research. It covers topics such as open science, research data management, data reuse, metadata, ecology, digital repositories, FAIR principles, and data citation.

Data Sharing
Scientific Data Management
Open Science
Research Data
Data Reuse
Metadata
Ecology
Digital Repositories
FAIR Principles
Data Citation

Research works: 17k
In the world top 10%: 1.7k
Top-10% rate: 10.1%
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25: +31%
Largest producer: United States

Research Data Management Practices

Which countries lead Research Data Management Practices research?

By volume, the United States and Germany publish the most (1.5k and 1.1k works in 2022-now).

By volume, 2022-now

1 United States 1.5k works
2 Germany 1.1k works
3 United Kingdom 510 works
4 Netherlands 269 works
5 France 236 works
6 Italy 219 works
7 China 208 works
8 India 169 works
9 Spain 153 works
10 Australia 151 works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

United States1,474 · 32.8%Germany1,101 · 24.5%United Kingdom510 · 11.4%Netherlands269 · 6.0%6 others listed1,136 · 25.3%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Research Data Management Practices research?

By volume in 2022-now, Leibniz Association publishes the most Research Data Management Practices research, followed by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

By volume, 2022-now

1 Leibniz AssociationGermany 151 works
2 Helmholtz Association of German Research CentresGermany 149 works
3 Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueFrance 69 works
4 Russian Academy of SciencesRussia 51 works
5 Max Planck SocietyGermany 39 works
6 National Research CouncilItaly 37 works
7 University of OxfordUnited Kingdom 36 works
8 DataCiteGermany 34 works
9 RWTH Aachen UniversityGermany 34 works
10 KU LeuvenBelgium 32 works

Who are the leading researchers in Research Data Management Practices?

The most-cited researchers publishing on Research Data Management Practices include David Moher, Rob Knight and Matthias Egger.

1 David Moher Canada 898k citations
2 Rob Knight United States 468k citations
3 Matthias Egger Switzerland 326k citations
4 John P. A. Ioannidis United States 317k citations
5 Mark I. McCarthy United Kingdom 267k citations

Ranked by citations received across their whole record, among researchers with at least three works on this topic.

What are the most cited papers in Research Data Management Practices?

The most cited paper in Research Data Management Practices is "The REDCap consortium: Building an international community of software platform partners" (Paul A. Harris, Robert J. Taylor, Brenda L. Minor et al., 2019), with 25,189 citations. Next come "Welcome to the Tidyverse" (22,949) and "Nextflow enables reproducible computational workflows" (4,440).

Most cited papers
#	Paper	Released	Citations
1	The REDCap consortium: Building an international community of software platform partners Paul A. Harris, Robert J. Taylor, Brenda L. Minor et al. · Journal of Biomedical Informatics Open access	9 May 2019	25,189
2	Welcome to the Tidyverse Hadley Wickham et al. · The Journal of Open Source Software Open access	21 Nov 2019	22,949
3	Nextflow enables reproducible computational workflows Paolo Di Tommaso, Maria Chatzou, Evan W. Floden et al. · Nature Biotechnology	Apr 2017	4,440
4	The nf-core framework for community-curated bioinformatics pipelines Philip Ewels, Alexander Peltzer, Sven Fillinger et al. · Nature Biotechnology Open access	13 Feb 2020	4,389
5	Generic Mapping Tools: Improved Version Released Paul Wessel, Walter H. F. Smith, Remko Scharroo et al. · Eos	5 Nov 2013	4,121

All 100 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Research Data Management Practices research done?

The largest centres of Research Data Management Practices research in 2022-now are Berlin (Germany), London (United Kingdom), Paris (France) and Hanover (Germany). Among places with at least 20 works in it, it is an unusually large share of all research in Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Mannheim and Jülich.

Largest cities, 2022-now

1 BerlinGermany 149 works
2 LondonUnited Kingdom 129 works
3 ParisFrance 102 works
4 HanoverGermany 83 works
5 BeijingChina 69 works
6 Washington D.C.United States 68 works
7 AmsterdamNetherlands 61 works
8 New YorkUnited States 59 works
9 MoscowRussia 52 works
10 CologneGermany 48 works

Where it is the local speciality

Eggenstein-LeopoldshafenDE · 21.5 works251×
MannheimDE · 35.2 works24×
JülichDE · 29.1 works19×

← less than its size predicts1×more →

Location quotient: how much more of its research is in Research Data Management Practices than the world average.

See Research Data Management Practices on the map

Where is the best place to study Research Data Management Practices?

Among universities, judged by research, Leiden University, University of Oxford and KU Leuven score highest, combining excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged

40%

Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share

10%

Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale

30%

Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%

10%

Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad

10%

Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.

#	University	Score	Top 10%	Specialisation	Works	Growth
1	Leiden UniversityNetherlands	81.6	9.8%	9.7×	29	+86.8%
2	University of OxfordUnited Kingdom	69.2	5.3%	4.7×	36	+53.4%
3	KU LeuvenBelgium	67.5	8.3%	6.0×	32	+99.7%
4	Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinGermany	65.2	9.1%	15.7×	31	+64.9%
5	Uppsala UniversitySweden	63.0	24.3%	3.6×	11	+140.6%
6	University of SouthamptonUnited Kingdom	62.0	7.8%	7.3×	21	+32.4%
7	University of ManchesterUnited Kingdom	61.5	7.4%	5.2×	24	+76.2%
8	University of AmsterdamNetherlands	60.9	16.0%	4.4×	14	+18.6%
9	University of South AfricaSouth Africa	59.2	22.1%	5.0×	12	+74.1%
10	University of MichiganUnited States	58.2	11.3%	2.9×	24	+83.4%
11	University of BolognaItaly	58.0	10.8%	4.8×	22	+148.2%
12	Stanford UniversityUnited States	56.6	22.5%	1.8×	15	-5.7%
13	University of ZurichSwitzerland	56.2	15.5%	3.3×	13	+60.2%
14	RWTH Aachen UniversityGermany	55.8	3.7%	7.8×	34	+139.0%
15	University of EdinburghUnited Kingdom	55.2	9.6%	4.1×	20	+29.6%
16	Wageningen University & ResearchNetherlands	54.7	16.0%	4.8×	10	+106.8%
17	Freie Universität BerlinGermany	54.4	7.0%	9.0×	21	+73.4%
18	ETH ZurichSwitzerland	54.4	14.1%	2.7×	10	+34.6%
19	Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamNetherlands	53.8	11.8%	6.1×	14	+69.2%
20	University of California San DiegoUnited States	52.4	13.3%	2.6×	14	+27.3%
21	Wuhan UniversityChina	52.0	31.5%	1.2×	9	+7.9%
22	Technische Universität DresdenGermany	51.9	6.2%	7.1×	22	+226.1%
23	University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignUnited States	51.1	12.1%	5.3×	25	-13.0%
24	Friedrich Schiller University JenaGermany	50.5	20.6%	7.6×	13	-25.5%
25	Erasmus University RotterdamNetherlands	50.3	6.3%	6.5×	19	+196.1%
26	University of TorontoCanada	50.0	14.7%	1.3×	14	+44.5%
27	Harvard UniversityUnited States	49.9	15.6%	0.8×	15	+8.4%
28	University of TwenteNetherlands	49.8	10.1%	7.5×	12	+174.8%
29	Utrecht UniversityNetherlands	49.7	11.8%	4.1×	16	-6.2%
30	Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität MünchenGermany	49.6	15.8%	2.3×	11	+82.2%
31	University College LondonUnited Kingdom	48.4	12.1%	1.5×	14	+5.5%
32	University of SheffieldUnited Kingdom	46.9	14.8%	2.8×	8	+8.7%
33	Graz University of TechnologyAustria	46.5	6.3%	13.1×	14	+399.8%
34	University of California, BerkeleyUnited States	45.8	8.4%	2.3×	12	+15.9%
35	Maastricht UniversityNetherlands	45.7	10.7%	5.1×	11	-7.3%
36	Indiana UniversityUnited States	43.3	4.7%	3.5×	18	-8.7%
37	University of California, Santa BarbaraUnited States	42.9	11.7%	4.7×	8	+5.1%
38	University of Tennessee at KnoxvilleUnited States	42.7	4.8%	5.5×	12	+72.5%
39	University of ViennaAustria	42.6	9.0%	4.5×	13	+6.5%
40	University of GöttingenGermany	42.2	12.0%	7.5×	15	-29.9%
41	Radboud University NijmegenNetherlands	41.7	13.1%	2.5×	8	+3.5%
42	University of CambridgeUnited Kingdom	40.1	16.7%	1.5×	10	-34.3%
43	UiT The Arctic University of NorwayNorway	35.9	4.7%	16.6×	16	-43.6%
44	University of British ColumbiaCanada	35.9	18.2%	1.3×	9	-33.8%
45	University of KonstanzGermany	32.1	3.0%	12.6×	9	+97.8%
46	Université Paris Sciences et LettresFrance	31.6	4.1%	4.2×	9	+123.0%
47	University of LuxembourgLuxembourg	30.1	6.8%	6.2×	8	-6.6%
48	University of MannheimGermany	24.7	2.9%	17.6×	9	-

Universities only. The score blends excellence (40%), size (30%), specialisation (10%), growth (10%), international reach (10%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise.

Every institution in Research Data Management Practices, country by country

Is Research Data Management Practices research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 31% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2026. The fastest-growing topics are Research Data Management Practices.

grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Research Data Management Practices as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.017% in 2024.

Fractional works of Research Data Management Practices over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

Discussion

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Which countries lead Research Data Management Practices research?

By volume, 2022-now

How concentrated that is

Which institutions lead Research Data Management Practices research?

By volume, 2022-now

Who are the leading researchers in Research Data Management Practices?

What are the most cited papers in Research Data Management Practices?

Where is Research Data Management Practices research done?

Largest cities, 2022-now

Where it is the local speciality

Where is the best place to study Research Data Management Practices?

Is Research Data Management Practices research growing?

Its share of all research

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Which topics inside it are moving

Related research

Discussion