Data Stewards and FAIR Data Training in Biomedical Research

The NFDI4Health Data Steward pilot project

Zusammenfassung

Research data management (RDM) in the health sector is highly diverse and complex due to ethical (Viberg et al., 2022), legal (European Commission, 2016) considerations, and multiple stakeholders (Maurer et al., 2022), to name but a few. In recent years, data stewardship has emerged as a new professional field to fulfil this task. However, the exact roles and responsibilities of data stewards as well as how data stewardship is best implemented in institutions is not fully defined (Seidlmayer et al., 2023). 

The aim of this paper is to explain our strategy for establishing research data management for clinical and epidemiological studies within the National Research Data Infrastructure for Personal Health Data (NFDI4Health).  In NFDI4Health, we conducted a pilot project to examine how library-based data stewards specialising in RDM (infrastructure-specific) and discipline-specific data stewards working in research institutions can work together to successfully implement RDM in research institutions. 

The pilot project was designed to run two pilots, one with epidemiological studies and one with clinical studies. The pilot identified both the infrastructure- and discipline-specific data stewards as important profiles in the spectrum of data management implementation and how their situated, collaborative learning contributed to successful outcomes. The experiences of the involved institutions are presented, and the main features of the two approaches are outlined within the NFDI4Health pilot project.