Why Data Stewardship

What is Data Stewardship, and Why Does it Matter?

Data stewardship involves the careful management, preservation, and sharing of research data throughout its lifecycle—from creation to reuse. As research grows increasingly data-intensive, effective data stewardship ensures that data remain high-quality, reliable, and accessible. Skilled Data Stewards help researchers navigate challenges such as data storage, management, ethics, privacy, and sharing, making sure research findings can benefit others long after a project’s completion.

Data stewardship matters because properly managed data is a cornerstone of trusted, reproducible research. It empowers researchers across all disciplines to build on each other’s discoveries, accelerates scientific advancement, and helps prevent unnecessary duplication, saving valuable time, resources, and effort.

The FAIR Principles

  • Good data stewardship is guided by the internationally recognised FAIR principles, ensuring that research data are:
  • Findable: Easy to locate and clearly described through standardised metadata.
  • Accessible: Openly available under clear conditions, enabling reuse and citation.
  • Interoperable: Stored in standard formats, allowing data to be integrated and combined from different sources and systems.
  • Reusable: Well-documented, with clear licences and provenance, enabling data to be reliably reused for future research.

Adopting FAIR practices ensures research data maintains its value, integrity, and usefulness, ultimately benefiting the global research community and wider society.

Data Stewardship in Action

Effective data stewardship is transforming research across diverse fields:

  • Environmental Sciences:
    Data Stewards at dedicated research centres have curated comprehensive databases of environmental measurements, enabling global researchers to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource sustainability with reliable datasets.
  • Biomedical Research:
    Data stewardship initiatives in biomedicine, such as genome sequencing databases, have facilitated breakthroughs in precision medicine, diagnostics, and disease prevention, by providing accessible and well-curated data to scientists worldwide.
  • Digital Humanities:
    Cultural heritage projects use skilled Data Stewards to digitise, preserve, and annotate historical archives, making historical resources accessible to scholars and the public, thus extending their impact.

Current Challenges and CaSDaR’s Solutions

Despite these successes, many fields face significant challenges in data stewardship:

  • Lack of Expertise and Recognition:
    Many researchers manage data without sufficient training or time, resulting in data that are poorly organised, inadequately documented, or lost altogether.
  • Undefined Career Pathways:
    Without clear career paths, individuals with valuable data stewardship skills often lack opportunities for professional advancement, recognition, and support.
  • Inconsistent Standards Across Disciplines:
    Different research fields vary widely in their approach to data stewardship, leading to gaps and inefficiencies in data reuse and sharing.

How CaSDaR Will Help:

CaSDaR addresses these challenges directly by:

  • Building a thriving community that supports Data Stewards professionally and personally.
  • Clearly defining roles, responsibilities, and career pathways to ensure Data Stewards are recognised and rewarded appropriately.
  • Advocating for consistent standards and best practices for data management across disciplines, promoting wider adoption of FAIR data principles.
  • Offering tailored training programmes, resources, and practical experiences (“learn by doing”) that equip Data Stewards with essential skills and knowledge.

By tackling these challenges head-on, CaSDaR aims to establish data stewardship as a valued, sustainable, and integral part of research culture, ultimately improving the quality and impact of research data across every discipline.