Universities and other research institutions need to support their scientific staff also in management data – precious outputs and inputs of research activities. The Data Stewardship Wizard is ready to help and provides multiple ways of customizations to fit the institutional environment.
The research project procedures, available infrastructure, and various policies may be unique to a particular research institution. This highly affects what questions the researchers need to consider to plan data management for their projects properly. The Data Stewardship Wizard allows the creation of new knowledge models from scratch and the re-use of existing ones by changing certain parts of them.
For example, a university may customize an existing knowledge model by adding questions related to local data repositories. Similarly, questions that are not relevant to the organization may be removed.
By adjusting the knowledge model with institute-related questions and guides, researchers will learn and better understand the importance of data management. In addition, provided references to additional resources, contacts to local experts, exemplary plans, and answer suggestions from controlled vocabularies will promote data management in the institution.
The researchers will gain a new competence, and creating a data management plan will benefit them and the institution instead of a burden necessary for a grant application. Moreover, the Data Stewardship Wizard can become a place to share experience and continually improve local data management.
Just as funders specify DMP templates, a research institution can do the same for internal purposes. With other tools, it would be an additional burden. However, in the Data Stewardship Wizard, the users do not have to fill in answers again for a different template. Instead, they simply generate documents using various templates from the same project.
A research institute can develop customized templates, e.g., for internal project reporting and assessments. A researcher can then use this template when reporting to the institute and switch to the funders template (e.g. H2020 or Science Europe) when applying for a grant.
Every research institution runs various systems to make the lives of researchers easier – local secured repository, single sign-on service, project management systems, and many others. The Data Stewardship Wizard can be adapted through multiple forms of integrations and become part of the institutional infrastructure.
For example, researchers may log in to DSW through a local identity provider, fill DMP with suggestions from the API of a partner institution, and then submit the DMP directly in DSW for review by a local data steward. Similarly, a data steward can run a customized evaluation of all projects by using DSW API.
