2025/07/31 by Zuzanna B. Zagrodzka, Jenni Adams, Richard Campbell +1 · 2 voices
Business, Management and Accounting · Computer Science · Decision Sciences · #Big Data and Business Intelligence #Business #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Impact assessment #Interoperability #Marketing #Political science #Politics #Public administration #Public relations #Research Data Management Practices #Scientific Computing and Data Management #Service (business) #Stewardship (theology)
paper · pdf · doi:10.31222/osf.io/2ev6k_v1
openalex created_date 2025/07/31 · openalex publication_date 2025/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Increasingly, funders, publishers, and institutions expect researchers to comply with the FAIR principles to ensure that data is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. In an institutional context, however, questions remain as to how organisations can move beyond a broad commitment to FAIR, coupled with support for researchers to comply nominally with related grant conditions, to a more embedded and sustainable approach with a meaningful and pervasive impact on the FAIRness of research outputs. A data stewardship model offers one way to achieve this, yet in contrast to universities in mainland Europe and especially in the Netherlands, the UK is substantially lacking in such infrastructure at an institutional level, hampering efforts to evidence its potential impact within UK institutions and thereby advocate for its adoption. This article examines efforts to address this challenge via a recent project at the University of Sheffield to establish a pilot support service around FAIR data stewardship. It also provides a case study of how the benefits and impact of such an intervention might be identified and articulated through an evidence-led evaluation.