Part of the remit of CaSDaR is to provide an evidence base showing the value of embedding data stewardship into research workflows; we feel that a sustainable way of doing this is to fund data stewards in research organisations. CaSDaR has flexible funds allocated to enable development of projects, forming an evidence base to display the relevance of introducing data stewards in the UK across multiple disciplines and organisations.
As part of this mission , CaSDaR launched our first funding call in November 2025, with applications closing on the 22nd January 2026. Our reviewers had a month to review the applications, before our review panels for the £5k funding stream and £70k funding stream met on the 5th March 2026. The quality of the applications we received was incredible and we did not know how we would be able to decide on only funding a few of those applications.
For our £5k funding call, we received 5 applications, entirely from Higher Education Institutions. The role title of the primary applicants varied, with lecturers, librarians, and PRISMs submitting applications. We decided that we would be able to fund all applications:
- ‘Applying FAIR data principles to unlock the value of historic datasets at the UK Vegetable Genebank’ by Sarah Trinder;
- ‘The Springboard Project: Data Stewardship & Open Research Repository at Queen’s University Belfast’ by Michael O’Connor;
- ‘A Structured Approach to Laboratory Sample Inventory and Metadata Stewardship’ by Susana Sauret Gueto;
- ‘Piloting the role of Data Stewards in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) within Justice Settings’ by David Gilbert; and
- ‘Supporting the development of a community metadata standard: Consolidating and extending IRIS’ by Cylcia Bolibaugh.
The £70k funding was more competitive; received 24 applications and, though we had initially proposed that we would fund three applications, we decided that we should fund four projects given the high quality of applications that we received. The applications that we received came from primarily Higher Education Institutions (70%), with non-profit companies and Trusted Research Environments also submitting relatively lower numbers of applications. In line with this, most applications were submitted with lecturers or research associates as the primary applicants, with individuals with the title of ‘Data Steward’ as primary applicants on half of the number of applications of their academic counterparts. The project varied greatly in the approaches that they took; many applications were seeking to embed Data Stewards into projects and show the value of this through a narrative approach, whereas some were applying metrics to retrospectively analyse the impact of Stewardship. Other were seeking to create communities and training to promote good practice and identify barriers.
The successful £70k projects are below:
- ‘Evidencing the impact of data stewardship roles using administrative and scientometrics data’ by Noam Tal-Perry and Clair Castle;
- ‘Sustainable Data Stewardship: Building Continuity, Capacity, and Recognition in Temporary Research Environments’ by Duygu Dikicioglu;
- ‘FRAME-DS: Framework for Recognising Applied Data Stewardship Within TRE Workforces – A Collaborative, Cross-Organisation Pilot’ by Linus Chirchir and Rosie Seaman; and
- ‘IMFAIR: Isle of May FAIR and AI‑Ready Data Stewardship for Long‑Term Seabird Monitoring’ by Deena Mobbs and David Leaver.
We are incredibly excited to see what comes out of these projects, and we’re already looking forward to the next funding call!