Case Study: Tobacco Economics Control Project

Abstract

The Tobacco Control Economics Project is a project that seeks to gather evidence on tobacco use and economics in southern Africa. It is a project of the University of Cape Town with support from the DataFirst repository based at the University of Cape Town. Its aim is to gather data that already exists, sometimes in digital form, frequently in offline records or in some cases paper records, and bring them together as an open resource. The project faces challenges of data gathering as well as permissions. Frequently data is or should be “available” in some form but control over the data is relinquished only unreluctantly. In many cases the legal standing of data is unclear. Many of the challenges relating to the bringing together of the data involve ascertaining what the legal standing of a dataset is or gaining permissions for its re-use. DataFirst is a longstanding data sharing infrastructure with professional and experienced data management staff. Challenges of ensuring continued funding and maintenance are similar to those of data infrastructures globally. The infrastructure meets international standards and provides leadership to other services and platforms in this space.

Keywords

• research data
• data management
• open data
• toba