Data Stewardship and Responsible Data Science: Lessons from the CODATA-RDA Schools for Research Data Science [Panel Discussion]

Welcome everyone to the panel that we titled "Data Stewardship and Responsible Data Science: Lessons from Data Steward Instructor training".The reason we wanted to present this panel at this conference is that we feel it addresses a slightly under-discussed area of data science in general.This conference is doing a great job in highlighting some of the ethical concerns that come out of this rising data-centricity in research.We're seeing data-intensive research becoming the go-to for research.We're seeing an increase in global collaboration around data sharing, and we're seeing changes in the way data are being produced and made open and being re-used.This, of course, while it has a lot of potential also has a lot of problems, and particularly to do with the managing and longterm curation of data.We're seeing rapidly evolving data infrastructures that are underpinning this trend towards data intensive science.But we're also seeing a high turnover of researchers, and this really leads us to start questioning who is actually in place to be scrutinizing these infrastructures, implementing these infrastructures, implementing the policy and legislation that drives and controls these infrastructures.And who provides the long-term institutional expertise and memory to be able to control data, data sets and data collections within the institutions who are engaged in data intensive science.We're also seeing at the same time (and I think Mark Parsons touched on it yesterday) an increased prominence in thinking about openness in data (so the open data movement), but also FAIR data -so the findability, accessibility, inter-operability and re-usability of data.And understanding and implementing those commitments towards openness and fairness in data requires a considerable and unique skill set that sometimes is under-recognized withing institutions.So, what we really feel within this group and, I think, more broadly, is that there is a critical need for skilled individuals to manage, curate and integrate data sets and collections within institutions, but also to provide the short and long-term oversight of data -oversight not only of data within institutions but also how data moves between institutions and is re-used and recombined.And that leads us to discussions about data stewardship and the role that data stewards can play in safeguarding responsible data science.That was a very brief overview of why we feel this is an important panel and I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined by a number of my colleagues from the CODATA/RDA/FAIRSFAIR Data Steward Instructor Training.I'm going to briefly introduce each of them and then we're going to go forward with a more open discussion.We've left time at the end for questions so we do hope there will be some questions or comments on data stewardship in general, data stewardship in Africa and also the curriculum that we're teaching.So, without further ado, maybe the speakers can turn on their videos so that we can see who they are.The first person we have on the panel is Hugh Shanahan.Hugh has a background in computational biology focusing on transcript … and metagenomics combined with a deep background in computational theoretical physics.