Data steward
The data steward is the key person for data management questions, either at the research team level or institutional level. The Data Steward is responsible for ensuring that research data management policies are followed so that research data handling processes are in line with institutional and international standards for open data sharing. This ensures the quality and integrity of research data management throughout the entire research cycle - from the research planning phase to data collection, processing, analysis, preservation, subsequent sharing of data after the research is completed and its eventual reuse.
Open data Watch. 2024 [cit. 24-04-11]. https://opendatawatch.com/blog/defining-data-stewardship
University Data Steward
The University Data Steward provides support to researchers in the development of their data management plans, project applications and the projects themselves, and helps set institutional policy for research data management. The University Data Steward can help you in the following areas:
- Creating a data management plan for the research/project
- Compiling a brief research data management description for the project application
- Setting up appropriate research data management methods
- Finding suitable storage options for raw data
- Selecting a suitable data repository, creating metadata
- Assisting with publishing research data in a data repository
- Organisation and documentation of research data
- Training in data management plan, research data management
- Setting up research workflows in accordance with FAIR principles
- Identification of barriers to open data and research data publication
- Guiding the selection of a license for published research data
- Planning the costs of research data management in the project
The University Data Steward is only there to provide methodological support to research teams and individuals but is not there to analyse or process your research data. He or she works closely with the data stewards of the individual research teams or the researchers responsible for managing the research data in the project. A university data steward is not the same as a data analyst and data scientist.
Contact University Data Steward
Data steward in the project
The data steward in a project is one of the members of the research team who is responsible for ensuring the research data management throughout the project. In research projects, it is possible to allocate a scientist to work as a project data steward (e.g., a 0.1 or 0.2 FTE) and include the cost of this position in the project budget (if the project allows it). The project data steward works closely with the university data steward and is responsible for:
- Creating a data management plan and updating it regularly
- Setting up research data management for the project
- Storing, backing up and sharing research data
- Ensuring the security of the research data
- Organising and documenting research data during the project
- Creating a ReadMe file and metadata
- Ensuring data quality control
- Publishing the final research dataset in the data repository