The Figure shows the three main working areas of a data steward (Blue, purple and green circles). All three areas together ensure that research carried out at institutes or in projects produces FAIR data along the data life cycle. Data stewards interface and communicate between three stakeholders: 1) The policy makers such as funders, universities, the EU and the institutes’ deans. This group of stakeholders have a saying in how data should be handled; 2) The researchers and data scientists who produce data and work with the data on a daily basis with focus on research. They need to be enabled to handle data in a way which is policy compliant without losing the power to execute their research; And finally 3) the data and IT infrastructure providers, like ICT staff, technicians and application managers. This stakeholder group provides tools to which implement certain data policies and hence make it easier for scientists to manage their data in a policy compliant way. The three stakeholder groups are characterised by their own field of expertise and terminology. Data stewards can communicate between these stakeholder groups and provide hence the interface between fields of expertise.

This figure is part of a project funded by the ZonMw Personalised Medicine Programme under Dossier number: 80-84600-98-3007. The project period is Aug 2018 - July 2019. Additional funding will be provided by UMCG, UMCU, Radboud University Nijmegen, Radboudumc and DTL/ELIXIR-Netherlands.