Further Professionalising Data Stewardship: engaging with and building on experience, the work of Research Data Alliance PDS Interest Group.

There is much effort at all scales invested in preserving and adding value to data within projects and for long-term re-use. As the related communities and services develop it is important that they can take stock of their development to ensure planning for long term development and viability (in terms of their factors such as staffing, funding etc) and plan for future service adjustments (including potential for service retirement). Such reflective practice is aided by frameworks such as the WGISS Data Management and Stewardship maturity index and the Core Trust Seal. However, these exist in a wider context of a necessary growing professionalisation of data stewardship as a whole, be that at a service level, drawing in aspects of service initialisation, development, business cases etc, or for individuals in regards to career pathways, training curricular etc.

Since 2020 the Research Data Alliance’s Professionalising Data Stewardship Interest Group has undertaken a range of activities to support the wider standing of this profession. The Interest Group’s ‘Models of Data Stewardship’ survey report and dataset provides insights into practices and experiences across a wide range of service types (from project level/single-domain to multi-national/multi-domain and generic services) based on a conceptual model of data stewardship services. Meanwhile, the career paths (survey report in production) and training interest task group outputs (landscape Report and Matrix) provide material useful for those concerning staff development and training needs. These outputs support the continuing work within the Business Case Task Group and Terminology Task groups, seeking to provide common community-wide agreed terminology around the varied aspects of data stewardship in all its forms and aiding services to develop and be sustained.

The Interest group is now entering its next phase of work and seeking further engagement with the wider community to build on the outputs achieved to date. This poster will provide further details on the group’s aims and outputs and seek to open up collaborations with interested parties.