Description

As a research data steward, I support and work in close collaboration with the main data producers and users in academia: the researchers, ranging from undergraduate students to full professors. I advise researchers, make sure data is handled in a manner compliant with the institute’s policy and may also perform hands-on work in a project.

My work focuses on implementing the institute’s data guidelines and translating them into domain and project specific procedures, for example by managing a database or reviewing data management plans. My responsibilities and tasks focus on translating the researcher needs on data into infrastructural and service requirements.

Focus

  • Develop and implement data management plans for projects and data collections and align Data Managements Plans (DMP) with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles and the principles of Open Science
  • Advise projects and data collections on compliance with codes of conduct, regulations and field specific legal and ethical standards
  • Provide adequate research data management (RDM) support to researchers. This involves, for example, supporting researchers in improving the reproducibility of their computational analyses or directing researchers to appropriate data management and archival solutions
  • Monitor a project’s needs regarding data-infrastructure and tools for RDM
  • Determine the adequate level of knowledge and skills of researchers on RDM
  • Identify the requirements of adequate support and data infrastructure for FAIR and long-term archiving of data of a project

Learning path

Institutes across Europe have started hiring professional data stewards. A research oriented data steward is expected to be competent in the following areas:

  • Create awareness and communicate about RDM and the FAIR data principles and translate RDM policies into guidelines for researchers
  • Transform discipline specific research data into FAIR data with help of available services and tools
  • Advise and assist researchers on short and long term actions for RDM
  • Assess RDM knowledge and skills, identify gaps among researchers and take action when needed
  • Understand the purpose and use of a DMP in a project and have the skills to utilise the available tools and templates to produce a DMP
  • Assist researchers in developing a DMP, review DMPs, and support researchers in putting DMPs into action
  • Liaise with the surrounding environment (department, project, national stakeholders and international network) and continuously follow the field to gain knowledge of relevant facilities, tools and emerging standards available for RDM

If you want to become competent in these areas or build capacity in your institution then the following training resources might be useful:

Common problems

Resources

Relevant tools and resources

Tool or resource Description Tags Registry
Argos Plan and follow your data. Bring your Data Management Plans closer to where data are generated, analysed and stored. DMP researcher data manager
BBMRI-ERIC's ELSI Knowledge Base The ELSI Knowledge Base is an open-access resource platform that aims at providing practical know-how for responsible research. data protection sensitive policy officer data manager human data
Beacon The Beacon protocol defines an open standard for genomics data discovery. researcher data manager IT support human data
Bitbucket Git based code hosting and collaboration tool, built for teams. data organisation data manager IT support
Bulk Rename Utility File renaming software for Windows data organisation data manager researcher
Choose a license Choose an open source license licensing researcher data manager policy officer
Creative Commons License Chooser It helps you choose the right Creative Commons license for your needs. licensing researcher data manager policy officer
Crop Ontology The Crop Ontology compiles concepts to curate phenotyping assays on crop plants, including anatomy, structure and phenotype. researcher data manager IT support plants
Data Curation Centre Metadata list List of metadata standards metadata researcher data manager
Data Use Ontology DUO allows to semantically tag datasets with restriction about their usage. data manager researcher human data
DATAVERSE Open source research data respository software. storage researcher data manager IT support
DMP Canvas Generator Questionnaire, which generates a pre-filled a DMP DMP researcher data manager
DMP OPIDoR Online questionnaire for the development of data management plans - repository of DMPs DMP researcher data manager
DMPlanner Semi-automatically generated, searchable catalogue of resources that are relevant to data management plans. DMP researcher data manager
DMPonline A free tool to write, share and export a data management plan. Built-in data management plan templates for many major funders. DMP researcher data manager
DMPonline Belgium A free tool to write, share and export a data management plan. Instance aimed at Belgian researchers with built-in data management plan templates for the major funders. DMP researcher data manager
DMPTool Build your Data Management Plan DMP researcher data manager
DMPTuuli Finland Data management planning tool DMP researcher data manager
DS-Wizard Data Stewardship Wizard DMP researcher data manager IT support nels
e!DAL-PGP Plant Genomics and Phenomics Research Data Repository plants researcher data manager IT support
EasyDMP DMP creation, versioning and sharing DMP researcher data manager
ECPGR Hub for the identification of plant genetic resources in Europe plants researcher data manager
ELIXIR Deposition Databases for Biomolecular Data List of discipline-specific deposition databases recommended by ELIXIR. data publication researcher data manager IT support
EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service EMBL-EBI’s web portal for finding ontologies metadata data manager researcher
EMBL-EBI's data submission wizard EMBL-EBI's wizard for finding the right EMBL-EBI repository for your data. data publication researcher data manager
EUDAT licence selector wizard EUDAT's wizard for finding the right licence for your data or code. licensing researcher data manager policy officer
EURISCO European Search Catalogue for Plant Genetic Resources plants researcher data manager
FAIDARE FAIDARE is a tool allowing to search data across dinstinct databases that implemented BrAPI. researcher data manager plants
fairsharing A curated, informative and educational resource on data and metadata standards, inter-related to databases and data policies. metadata data publication policy officer data manager researcher micro biotech
GA4GH data security toolkit Principled and practical framework for the responsible sharing of genomic and health-related data. data publication policy officer data manager IT support human data
GA4GH regular and ethical toolkit Framework for Responsible Sharing of Genomic and Health-Related Data data protection sensitive policy officer data manager IT support human data
Git Distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects data organisation data manager IT support
GitHub Versioning system, used for sharing code, as well as for sharing of small data data publication data organisation IT support data manager
GitLab GitLab is an open source end-to-end software development platform with built-in version control, issue tracking, code review, CI/CD, and more. Self-host GitLab on your own servers, in a container, or on a cloud provider. data organisation data publication IT support data manager
How to License Research Data - DCC Guidelines about how to license research data from Digital Curation Centre licensing researcher data manager policy officer
HumanMine HumanMine integrates many types of human data and provides a powerful query engine, export for results, analysis for lists of data and FAIR access via web services. data organisation data manager researcher human data data analysis
ISA-tools Open source framework and tools helping to manage a diverse set of life science, environmental and biomedical experiments using the Investigation Study Assay (ISA) standard IT support data manager micro biotech
Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) Web portal for finding ontologies metadata data manager researcher
MIADE Minimum Information About Disorder Experiments (MIADE) standard metadata researcher data manager IDP
MIAPPE Minimum Information About a Plant Phenotyping Experiment metadata researcher data manager plants
MIGS/MIMS Minimum Information about a (Meta)Genome Sequence metadata researcher data manager marine micro biotech
MIxS Minimum Information about any (x) Sequence metadata researcher data manager marine
Ontobee A web portal to search and visualise ontologies metadata data manager researcher
ONTOMATON OntoMaton facilitates ontology search and tagging functionalities within Google Spreadsheets. researcher data manager IT support
Open Definition Conformant Licenses Licenses that are conformant with the principles laid out in the Open Definition. licensing researcher data manager policy officer
OpenEBench ELIXIR benchmarking platform to support community-led scientific benchmarking efforts and the technical monitoring of bioinformatics reosurces data analysis data manager IT support
OSF OSF (Open Science Framework) is a free, open platform to support your research and enable collaboration. storage researcher data manager
RDA Standards Directory of standard metadata, divided into different research areas metadata researcher data manager
Renamer4Mac File renaming software for Mac data organisation data manager researcher
Repository Finder Repository Finder can help you find an appropriate repository to deposit your research data. The tool is hosted by DataCite and queries the re3data registry of research data repositories. data publication researcher data manager
Research Management Plan Machine actionable DMPs. DMP researcher data manager
Research Object Crate (RO-Crate) RO-Crate is a lightweight approach to packaging research data with their metadata, using schema.org. An RO-Crate is a structured archive of all the items that contributed to the research outcome, including their identifiers, provenance, relations and annotations. metadata storage data organisation data manager researcher micro biotech
Rightfield RightField is an open-source tool for adding ontology term selection to Excel spreadsheets researcher metadata data manager micro biotech
Schemapedia Web portal for finding ontologies metadata data manager researcher
Scientific Data's Recommended Repositories List of respositories recommended by Scinetific Data, contains both discipline-specific and general repositories. data publication researcher data manager IT support
The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry Collaborative effort to develob interoperable ontologies for the biological sciences metadata data manager researcher
Tryggve ELSI Checklist A list of Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications (ELSI) to consider for research projects on human subjects sensitive policy officer data manager human data
Wellcome Open Research - Data Guidelines Wellcome Open Research requires that the source data underlying the results are made available as soon as an article is published. This page provides information about data you need to include, where your data can be stored, and how your data should be presented. data publication researcher data manager