Function and competencies matrices for three types of data stewards 'policy', 'research' and 'infrastructure'

This deliverable is part of the final report of the “Towards FAIR Data Steward as profession for the Lifesciences” project. The full report can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3471707. It provides the detailed description of the function (responsibilities and tasks), competencies (knowledge, skills and abilities) and learning objectives for the three data steward roles (‘policy’, ‘research’ and ‘infrastructure’), structured by eight competence areas.

In the “Towards FAIR Data Steward as profession for the Lifesciences” project (https://zenodo.org/communities/nl-ds-pd-ls), based on the literature and consultations, three different data steward stakeholder-fields were defined in the data stewardship landscape, depending on their interaction with specific stakeholders. All three stakeholder-fields together ensure that research carried out at institutes and in projects produces FAIR data along the data life cycle. Data stewards find themselves positioned at different positions in this landscape as they interface and communicate between these different stakeholder groups. The three stakeholder-fields are characterised by their own expertise and terminology. Data stewards can communicate between these stakeholder groups and hence provide the interface between fields of expertise.

To indicate the particular or main focus of a data steward, three different data steward roles can be defined (‘policy’, ‘research’ and ‘infrastructure’). For all three data steward roles, eight competence areas were defined. The responsibilities and tasks in these eight competence areas can be seen as different aspects of the function that the data steward has. In practice, one data steward in a department may have all roles or, in case of multiple data stewards, roles may be divided between different persons. The responsibilities and tasks per competence area are formulated according to the focus of the data steward. In case a data steward combines the focus on for instance policymakers (data steward – policy) and researchers (data steward – research), this data steward will also have a combination of the responsibilities and tasks defined for these two data stewardship roles.