What is a Data Steward?

Contributors

Robert Andrews

Branka Franicevic

Sara Morsy

Krzysztof Poterlowicz

Objectives

• To learn what Data Stewardship is, in the Life Sciences

• To be able to understand the different Data Stewardship roles in the Life Sciences

What is data stewardship?

Data Stewardship includes all activities necessary to ensure research data are FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). These activities include all 7 spokes of the data life cycle (plan, collect, process, analyse, preserve, share, reuse)

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Speaker Notes

• This RDM bite looks to define Data Stewardship and the role of the Data Steward, including the 3 categorisation of roles performed in the life sciences.

• So what is Data Stewardship?
• Data Stewardship works across all disciplines and the term is used to mean the management of data
• Data Stewardship includes things like data accessibility, and usability, so that it is a form that people can take, trust and use easily and safely.
• You may have heard of the term FAIR data, which considers these principles.
• The requirement for diligent Data Stewardship has grown in the Life Sciences, as more people begin working with large, complex and sensitive datasets.
• With this growth has come the growth and professionalisation of the Data Stewardship role in the Life Sciences, where this role acts as a single point of contact for people within an organisation, such as a university.
• This role is advisory and is able to help people to manage their data better.
• Commonly, this role is performed by Bioinformaticians or data savvy researchers and support staff, as part of their role.

What is a data steward?

Data Steward: policy

Research data management (RDM) policy and strategy for an institution

Data Stewards: Infrastructure

Infrastructure building, such as building IT data storage, to support RDM policy and practice

Data Stewards: Research (including researchers)

RDM planning, support and implementation on the ground

Speaker Notes

• Data Stewardship in the Life Sciences falls into three categories, though it could be argued that there are four if we include data savvy researchers who perform Data Stewardship as part of their research.
• So what are these 3 categories?
• Firstly, Data Stewards, in policy, work at the level of developing, implementing and monitoring research data management policy within an institution.
• These Data Stewards work closely with researchers and support staff, as well as finance and legal teams.
• Data Stewards in infrastructure are usually support IT staff.
• They maintain research infrastructure such as secure storage, and tools enabling reproducible research such as analysis workflow and pipelines.
• Data Stewards in research cover a spectrum of dedicated professionals within a department or institute, from fulltime staff dedicated to FAIR Data Stewardship at the research coalface, or more commonly a go to person in the department who enables good data management practice through data management planning, advice and monitoring.

Professionalisation of Data Stewardship

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Speaker Notes

• Professionalisation of data stewardship is ongoing, as its role is recognised as crucial to FAIR research data management.
• Role profiles and competency frameworks enable institutions to recruit and embed data stewards into daily research.

Thank you!