<div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_default" style><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">​</span><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">The University of Cape Town Research Committee (URC) initiated the process of institution-wide data curation </font><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">planning at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This arose from URC meeting discussions concerning research </span><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">support at UCT.</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">The URC wanted to follow international best practice and develop policy to archive and </font><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">​</span><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">manage the data collected by UCT researchers in the process of their research.</font></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Creation and implementation </font><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">of Research Data Management (RDM) policies at universities has become a prerequisite for research integrity </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">and research efficiency at these institutions.</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">URC members undertook research in this area to inform </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">policymaking. Sakkie Janse van Rensburg, ICTS Director, and Prof Ed Rybicki of the URC visited Australia to </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">investigate research data storage at Australian universities and brought back information on best practice at </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">these institutions.</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">The UCT Director of Libraries, Gwenda Thomas, scoped data management policies at South </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">African universities (University Research Committee, 2012).</span></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style><b><font color="#ff0000"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">This revealed that only UP had an official Research </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Data Management policy, which was sparse on detail.</span></font></b></div>
</div><div><br></div><a href="https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/images/docs/20140307-uct-rsearch-data-management-woolfrey.pdf">https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/images/docs/20140307-uct-rsearch-data-management-woolfrey.pdf</a></div>