SwissDS-ENV

As an emerging profile, the role of Data Steward is becoming increasingly important in the landscape of research data management support in Swiss academic institutions.

Data Stewards play an expert role in research data management and open data, while dealing with many issues related to data protection, security, ethics, documentation, archiving, sharing, etc. They also bring their support to good practices in Research Data Management.

As of today, this role is often filled by researchers from the relevant research fields, by computer scientists or by information science specialists. Most of these Data Stewards do not currently hold a recognized qualification.

UNIL partners with seven other Swiss academic institutions, to implement a CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) in Data Stewardship as part of the project Swiss Data Stewardship Environment: Profile - Training - Network (SwissDS-ENV). This certificate course, to be delivered at the end of 2024/early 2025, will contribute to greater recognition of this emerging profile, while strengthening its skills and offering a new career opportunity in the field of scientific research. It will also build and formalize a community of practice at the Swiss scale.

The project, the objectives and the planned activities are described in detail in the proposal submitted and accepted by swissuniversities.

SwissDS-ENV is funded for two years (2023-2024) by swissuniversities and PgB Open Science I - Phase B. The project is part of the B5.2 action line of the Swiss National Open Research Data Strategy and of the measurement plans about Data Stewardship.

The CAS in Data Stewardship is being developed in line with the directives of LEHE, of the LFCo and of the reference criteria of swissuniversities. The CAS is produced by universities and for members of universities. As such, it is thus not in competition with private offers.

SwissDS-ENV includes 3 work packages

Milestones