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Connecting communities and resources for better RDM and data stewardship: ELIXIR-UK's contribution

Pérez Sitjà, Xènia

Abstract

This poster was part of the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research (CaSDaR) Townhall Launch event on the 18th September 2025 Abstract: ELIXIR-UK is at the forefront of research data management (RDM) and data stewardship, with a strong focus on the life sciences but expertise that readily translates across disciplines. Within ELIXIR, we co-lead the RDM Community and coordinate the development of the Data Stewardship Handbook, a collaborative resource that captures good practices and guidance from organisations across Europe. Alongside this, we contribute to flagship ELIXIR resources such as the RDMkit, the FAIR Cookbook, and FAIRsharing, which together provide researchers and stewards with practical solutions, standards, and decision-support tools for making data FAIR. The ELIXIR-UK RDM Club supports this work at the grassroots level by providing a regular, open forum for UK researchers, data stewards, and support professionals to share knowledge and strengthen practice. Meetings highlight real-world experiences, covering topics such as data management planning, metadata standards, repositories, and stewardship workflows. By fostering peer-to-peer learning and community exchange, the RDM Club builds local capacity while feeding into broader European efforts. Through this combination of national coordination, international leadership, and community-driven engagement, ELIXIR-UK is advancing the professionalisation of data stewardship, amplifying UK expertise across Europe and benefiting from collective knowledge, and equipping researchers with the skills and resources to make their data sustainable and reusable.

Full text

2025: Expanding Data Stewardship guidance 2024: Co-Leading ELIXIR-RDM Community Co-leading the development of the Data Stewardship Handbook, with the vision of extending the handbook beyond life sciences to other disciplines. Co-leading the official RDM Community of ELIXIR at European level 2020: Leadership in Resource Development Co-led the development of the RDMkit and FAIR Cookbook – 2 Horizon Europe recommended resources supporting FAIR best practices for life sciences and health data. 2018: First ELIXIR-UK data stewardship project Members of the UK Node participate in the first data stewardship projects within ELIXIR, collaborating with oher Nodes in Europe. 2016 ELIXIR-UK memebrs coauthor the FAIR guiding principles. Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data 3, 160018 (2016) 2013-2015 – ELIXIR-UK joins the ELIXIR Europe Consortium The UK Node of ELIXIR is established to bring together researchers across the UK working on life sciences data, bioinformatics and computational biology, share expertise and reap the benefits of knowledge exchange with our European counterparts. 2023: Launch of the RDM Club Created a national forum for data stewards and researchers to connect, learn, and share best practices. From just 10 attendees in early 2023, the club now reaches up to 70 attendees per month, attracting people at all career stages and UK funders. 2021-2024: Data Stewardship Fellowship Won MRC/BBSRC-funded project to coordinate a nation-wide fellowship programme to upskill UK life sciences teams in data stewardship. F ellows Training courses Developed courses and workshops on basic and specialised topics in an open and reusable format 24 17 60 27 12 17 91 0 2025: Published UK specific DMP templates and examples ELIXIR-UK is developing and promoting UK-specific templates in the Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW) – an ELIXIR-recommended interoperability resource and Horizon-Europe-recommended resource for DMP creation. The work includes 3 case studies and a total of 17 example DMPs for different data types and research projects. ELIXIR-UK is supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council – Current grant: BB/C001384/1. ELIXIR-UK Discover the building blocks behind a decade in data management and stewardship for the life sciences and beyond ELIXIR-UK is the national Node of ELIXIR – the European life science research infrastructure.Since ELIXIR-UK was formed, it has grown its work and expertise in research data management, coordinating a distributed network of 30 UK organisations and communities across the UK. Interested in what we do? Come talk to us!