National open science initiative: Development of data stewardship at SFUVET
Open science is described as a paradigm whereby scientific research and data are made publicly accessible and disseminated. As an aspect of open science, ORD is intended to facilitate the accessibility and reusability of research data. With this project, data stewardship procedures will be developed and implemented at SFUVET.
Open science is described as a paradigm whereby scientific research and data are made publicly accessible and disseminated. As an aspect of open science, ORD (Open Research Data - swissuniversities) is intended to facilitate the accessibility and reusability of research data. Publicly funded research data in Switzerland must be made available in digital form in order to enable the reusability (e.g. in the pursuit of other research questions), reproducibility (quantitative paradigm) and intersubjective comprehensibility (qualitative paradigm) of research findings.
Swiss higher education institutions are now being asked to develop internal data stewardship to help researchers to better manage their research data. The Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training (SFUVET) recognises the importance of managing ORD and wishes to provide its researchers with training and support. With this project, data stewardship will be developed and implemented at SFUVET.
SFUVET is a small university of teacher education with a multidisciplinary research team. Data stewardship should make it easier for researchers to organise their data. Thanks to the work that SFUVET researchers have done on SNSF projects, SFUVET already has experience with managing research data in various disciplines and using several different methodologies. We have therefore opted for a bottom-up approach.
The first step will be to organise a national research retreat with all of our researchers to raise awareness of the open data concept. Based on existing experiences (data management plans, research ethics and integrity), it should be possible to identify the support needs and questions of researchers. Once this has been done, suitable internal data stewardship can be established and internal workflows adjusted accordingly. We will also be able to identify areas where data stewardship can complement existing infrastructures and give rise to synergies. In order to answer questions and provide researchers with the necessary knowledge and skills, an internal knowledge base will be set up (e.g. webpage or internal repository). Various discussions and joint workshops with other universities of teacher education will also be organised as part of this project.