Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A 'Data Steward' contributor identified by ORCID listed against each dataset in the DMP.
- Is an instance
An institutional embedded data steward named on all department DMPs.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
The principal investigator (a separate role).
- Not an instance
A repository service (a host, not a steward).
Editorial commentary
The data steward role names the individual accountable, day to day, for executing a Data Management Plan (DMP)‘s commitments — organising deposits, maintaining dataset metadata, liaising with an ethics board over amendments, and keeping the plan itself updated as the project progresses. It is deliberately distinct from the principal investigator: a PI is accountable for the research overall, while a data steward is accountable for the specific, often unglamorous mechanics of getting data management actually done, and the two roles are frequently held by different people, including a shared institutional steward supporting several projects at once.
The RDA DMP Common Standard‘s “contributor” entity supports recording a steward by ORCID iD together with a controlled role value, drawn from the DataCite contributor-role vocabulary or an institutional equivalent — which is what allows a data steward’s contribution to be captured formally in a machine-actionable DMP (maDMP) rather than only mentioned in passing in the narrative. A research office setting up a new project’s DMP should confirm a named steward exists and is recorded in this structured way, not just described informally as “the postdoc will handle the data.”
How it differs from adjacent DMP concepts
- vs. DMP review — a data steward executes the plan’s commitments; a reviewer evaluates the plan’s content. The same person can do both, but the roles are conceptually separate.
- vs. DMP component — the steward is recorded as a contributor component within the plan, not a separate structure.
References
- Barend Mons, Data Stewardship for Open Science (CRC Press, 2018); DataCite Metadata Schema contributor types.
Also known as
DMP data steward · RDM steward
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Data steward role (in DMP)"
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"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:22:48",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T14:11:44",
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