Saudi scholars’ perceptions and use of open government data portals at Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a study on open data usage among Saudi scholars. It investigates the sample’s perceptions of open data and open data portals. The study reported the factors affecting the participants’ decision to use open data and aimed to understand Saudi researchers’ practices and perceptions related to the use and sharing of open data. It adopted a quantitative approach and a questionnaire was distributed to and collected from 190 Saudi academic staff to measure their perceptions, their open data usage, the benefits of open data, and the factors that significantly impacted their open data utilization. The findings reveal that 42.1% of Saudi researchers used government open data portals and regularly visited open data portals provided by the university and the government mainly for research purposes. The results also indicate that open data portals enabled Saudi researchers to obtain useful data for their research while giving them the tools to visualize and understand the data.