In the face of climate change, sustainability has become a societal concern, and academia is no exception. Several studies have focused on assessing the environmental impact of research, but they remain relatively scarce (Mariette et al., 2022) and mainly focus on evaluating the impact of: conferences (Neugebauer et al., 2020; Tao et al., 2021; Jäckle, 2022; Cavallin Toscani et al., 2023), research projects (Liora et al., 2022; Papadogiannaki et al., 2023; Reyes-García et al., 2022), or research institutes (Mariette et al., 2022).
However, these studies often focus on researchers’ travel (for conferences or commuting) and their computing equipment, but rarely address more specific research activities such as data collection (in the field or using specific tools) or data analysis using Big Data, for example. Moreover, the issue of long-term preservation of research data and its environmental impact is not addressed. On the other hand, the concept of sustainability is often limited to the ecological aspect, overlooking the economic and social dimensions, which are also integral to the concept of sustainability (Halla & Binder, 2020; Aytac et al., 2023).
The aim of this presentation is to highlight the main environmental challenges associated with research data management, particularly those related to data repositories, and to show how research data can contribute to the sustainability goals set by the UN as part of its 2030 Agenda.