Data Stewardship across the Discipline Divide: Lessons Learned by the Embedded Data Stewards at the University of Vienna during their First Year of Work
Creators: name: Kate, Emily J.
name: Bargmann, Monika
name: Feichtinger, Michael
name: Kalová, Tereza
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023

description: Poster Abstract 

In 2022, the University of Vienna (UNIVIE) began a data stewardship pilot program that sought to embed discipline-specific data stewards in faculties, institutes, and departments. To date, four data stewards have been brought into the program.

These data stewards serve a diversity of researchers and are equally distributed between the humanities and life sciences, assisting scholars in a breadth of disciplines including, but not limited to, behavioral, functional, evolutionary, and computational biology; ecology; neuroscience; anthropology; nutritional science; pharmaceutical science; environmental geoscience; literary studies; linguistics; media studies; and cultural and historical studies.

This poster shares a qualitative account of the similarities and differences in the needs of researchers across the disciplines and their responses to the implementation of the embedded data stewardship program. We also address how differences in the size and structure of organizational units have aided and challenged research data management support. Finally, we provide a brief comment on how differences in academic culture within departments and disciplines can impact researcher willingness to accept assistance and how data stewards can actively foster the development of positive relationships.  

In the past year, our efforts have demonstrated that, regardless of discipline, there are several needs that uniformly exist among researchers. There is often a significant desire for basic services including assistance with the drafting of data management plans, the evaluation of available data storage resources, and the explanation of the FAIR and CARE principles. On the other hand, more discipline-specific requirements have emerged. For example, scholars in the humanities at UNIVIE often require assistance finding long-term archival solutions for project outputs like websites, digital editions, and databases. In contrast, researchers in the life sciences are more concerned with the maintenance of data production pipelines and the development of reliable onboarding and offboarding procedures for research groups with a high density of temporary members.

Furthermore, the size and organization of an embedded data steward’s designated faculty have a significant impact on how data stewards can best reach the researchers they serve and the speed with which data stewards are accepted into the research environment. In smaller communities, data stewards are more quickly integrated and news of their presence spreads quickly via casual conversation. In contrast, large faculties often require carefully organized outreach plans that may take weeks or months to implement and require the active support of higher administration. Additionally, the search for institutional allies, like doctoral school coordinators and postdoctoral representatives can help to build credibility and to hone outreach strategies.

In the last year, we have found that every group of researchers is as similar as they are unique, often exhibiting comparable knowledge gaps, but requiring different day-to-day solutions to RDM problems. With this said, almost all respond favorably to a judgment-free attitude and a sincere and dedicated offer of help.

 

This poster was created by the University of Vienna Data Stewards (https://rdm.univie.ac.at/data-stewards-at-the-university/)