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Research Data Management

The data steward team

Data Management is becoming more relevant in an environment of Open Access and Open Science. There are a number of profits for those researchers who are on top of their data management:

  • Good data management leads to more efficient and cost-effective research
  • Increase research impact by sharing and getting credit for the data you generate.
  • FAIR data management means your data is reusable by your future self, and others.
At the Faculty of Science, we are committed to work with the FAIR principles. In the BETA RDM policy FAIR is explained as follows: ‘The FAIR principles aim to enhance the possibilities to reuse data. The foundation of the FAIR principles is that it should be possible to find and use data in an automated way, instead of manually (or not at all). Good data management is not the main goal of the FAIR principles, but is an important tool that can contribute directly to new scientific insight and innovation.
  • Findable
  • Accessible
  • Interoperable
  • Reusable
How to achieve FAIRness, according to the FAIR principles, is open to interpretation. In particular the FAIRification process can differ between fields of expertise, making its implementation discipline/subject specific. For example, the Horizon 2020 guidelines suggest data should be “as open as possible and as closed as necessary”. “Open” in order to foster the reusability and to accelerate research, but at the same time “closed” to safeguard the privacy of the subjects and intellectual property.

The Data Stewards facilitate the coordination and development of RDM related topics in the Faculty of Science, to make it possible for researchers to practice good RDM. Thereby enhancing their research.

Who are we?

c-dijkChristine Dijk MA is a Policy Advisor at the Faculty of Science. As a member of the policy team of the Faculty she is handling the RDM dossier. 




b-olivierDr Brett Olivier is a Systems Biology researcher turned data steward. Besides his work in the Faculty of Science he is data steward of the AIMMS institute at the VU.



What we do

  • Actively maintain the Faculty RDM policy maintenance and further development.
  • Enable RDM communication channels between the Faculty of Science departments and the rest of the VU.
  • Provide specialist support - as part of the RDM support network.
  • Build and facilitate the Faculty of Science RDM coordinator network (contact us for more details).

Contact us

The RDM support is centralized at the VU. There is a RDM support desk at the library which can be contacted via rdm@vu.nl. They can answer most of your questions. If there is need of specialist support, they will forward the request to one of the Data stewards.

If you have any questions concerning the VU or BETA RDM policy, RDM procedures or the RDM coordinator network please contact the BETA Data Steward team at: rdm.beta@vu.nl