Data management planning at UKCEH using the Data Stewardship Wizard
Nichols, Matthew; Ferguson, Shona; Stuart, Rick; Mobbs, Deena; Leaver, David; Dean, Hannah; Zwagerman, Thomas
- Publisher
- Zenodo
- Language
- en
Abstract
This poster was presented at the Careers and Skills for Data-driven Research (CaSDaR) Townhall Launch event on the 18th September 2025 Abstract: Effective data management is essential for addressing complex environmental challenges at UKCEH. The Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW) is a questionnaire-driven tool that helps researchers create comprehensive Data Management Plans (DMPs) aligned with the FAIR principles. Researchers are guided through domain-specific questions supported by bespoke guidance. Responses provide instant feedback in the form of FAIR data metrics, informing good data management practice. DSW automatically converts responses into a variety of prose-style DMPs that meet institutional and funder requirements, saving time for both researchers and data stewards.The DSW highlights a growing skillset for data stewards including tailoring and maintaining community guidance, supporting researchers in understanding requirements, and ensuring consistency and quality across diverse projects. The tool’s development also draws on technical expertise that is increasingly valuable for a subset of data stewards, such as working with APIs, templating, and automation.Our recent developments at UKCEH include a reporting tool that aggregates DMP responses across the organisation, providing insights that can highlight data-related trends, inform resource planning and surface new opportunities. We have also incorporated UKCEH’s ethics checklist, demonstrating how data stewards can collaborate across teams that support the research process.The DSW has been extended for use by NERC grant holders across multiple disciplines via the NERC Environmental Data Service (EDS).The development of the DSW at UKCEH and NERC EDS illustrates the growing opportunities for data stewards to influence practice at project, institutional, and funder levels.
Full text
Image credit: SangyaPundir shared under CC-BY-SA 4.0 Outcome u s e r DSW shows how data steward-led innovation can help to foster a culture embracing good data management and the FAIR principles. The rollout of the tool at UKCEH and the NERC data centres demonstrates how data stewards can influence practice at project, institutional and funder levels. w o r k fl o w Domain specific questions tailored to environmental sciences Submit DMP Complete data questionnaire Circulate DMP Review DMP Generate new documents Instant FAIR metrics feedback Make use of guidance to build confidence and skills Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW) is a tool with a fundamentally different approach to data management, designed to help deliver FAIR data in practice, and demonstrates how data stewards can embed good practice directly into the research process. The tool guides researchers through a series of relevant, multi-choice questions in a smart questionnaire, providing expert guidance and instant FAIR metrics feedback based on the answers. It automatically generates a range of bespoke data management plan documents, reducing the burden on researchers. The role of data stewards is becoming more vital as environmental scientists tackle increasingly complex and interdisciplinary challenges. Researchers are facing growing expectations around transparency, efficiency and compliance in the age of open science. Data stewards play a key role in meeting these needs, through bridging technical expertise, data management knowledge and policy requirements. DSW enables data stewards to disseminate these skills on a wider scale. Fully customisable document templates Coding and technical skills Configure automated submission processes DSW API and machine actionable DMPs Summary metrics calculated from across all projects through DSW API What tool(s) will you be using? Helping PI to maximise intergrative science and reuse of data benefits for researchers Sharing with colleagues: Context Introduction Construction of knowledge model Project level governance Promotes best practice day to day research activities Organisation level governance Bespoke expert data management guidance Questions from ethics review process Collaboration across teams Naming conventions and vocabularies Documents or access to questionnaire Comments or flag questions for attention File storage plans Data processing and preservation plans GDPR Reward and recognition FAIR data with DOIs lead to more citations improving confidence and trust Notify Ethics Committee and other stakeholders Meet funder and organisation expectations JCOPR Inform resource planning and surface new opportunities Highlight datarelated trends Aggregate DMP responses across the organisation Reporting tool Showing people how they can meet this increases quality and integrity FAIR and good practice ratings given to answers Dataset listing spreadsheet Consistency across DMPs Simpler for PI Closed questions More about the DSW: *wizard cartoons created using Microsoft Designer AI skills for data stewards UKCEH DSW implementation blogpost: Symbol legend e.g. RPython Other Fortran SAS JS M... La... Java FME Nichols, M., Ferguson, S., Stuart, R., Mobbs, D., Leaver, D., Dean, H., and Zwagerman, T. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Data management planning at UKCEH using the Data Stewardship Wizard Contact: [email protected]
