What does a career track for Data Stewards look like?
Abstract
This video is a talk from the Lightning Talks session at the CaSDaR Townhall Launch event on the 18th September 2025, in person at the Library of Birmingham and online. The presentation speaker was Elizabeth Newbold from STFC. Abstract: “What does a career track for data stewards look like?” If we want to consider career tracks for data stewards, we need to understand what the current situation is and the factors influencing career progression. The RDA Professionalising Data Stewardship IG conducted a survey and published a report “what does a career track for data stewards look like?” that explored the issues in an international context. The report (and accompanying data set) provides an evidence base for understanding how professional fulfilling data stewardship roles, but not necessarily formally identified as data stewards, perceive their career paths. The outputs of the survey led to the formation of the RDA Working Group Data Steward Career tracks which aims to develop a methodology for creating data steward personas and a sample set of personas linked to career tracks. This lightening talk will highlight some of the findings from the initial report and the status of the work from the recently formed working group. Speaker Bio: Elizabeth is the Open Science Theme Lead at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UKRI-STFC). The Open Science Theme includes activities related to data stewardship, open repositories and library services. She has a background in scientific information and libraries with a focus on open access, FAIR and open data. She has contributed to European Union funded projects in the areas of FAIR data and was the work package lead for a FAIR Competence Centre for the EC Funded FAIRsFAIR project (2019 – 2022) with a focus on professionalising data stewardship. Elizabeth is active in the international data community and is co-chair of the Research Data Alliance Career Tracks for Data Stewards Working Group. The work of which will be the focus of her talk today. More information on the event can be found here: https://casdar.ac.uk/event/careers-and-skills-for-data-driven-research-casdar-hybrid-event-launch/ A recording of the talk is available on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/0gXd98KoCKM This video is an output from the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research (CaSDaR) initiative, a 4-year UKRI funded dRTP initiative, grant number UKRI739.