A Tri-University Approach to Strengthen Arizona Research Data Management Services in a Post-pandemic Environment

Since 2017, information professionals at Arizona State have collaborated with those at the University of Arizona (the only state university in Arizona with a medical school) and Northern Arizona University on multiple cross-disciplinary scholarly communications projects. Arising in lock-step with these efforts are data compliance, sharing, and preservation questions that we must address at the institutional level. The impacts of COVID-19 on academia affected all aspects of the research, ranging from the undergraduate experience to the research enterprise. Research activities centered on the virus have been a priority of funders such as the NSF and NIH, with an added global interest in sharing that research as quickly as possible. This presentation, for the Arizona Library Association Professional Development Monthly Webinar Series, provides an inside view of how the libraries at the three universities collaboratively tackled research data management issues highlighted by the pandemic, including an increased need to provide data sharing services and the lack of a tri-university research data policy.