This week marks International Love Data Week (9-15 February, 2026) - and today at Sheffield (12 February 2026) also marks one year since the launch of our Data Stewards Network (DSN). Over the past year, the DSN has run a range of expert-led workshops and informal sessions, exploring what data stewardship looks like, how it can be improved, and how different stakeholders working with data can collaborate to increase its visibility. Today, the DSN is about 140 members strong!

To continue the momentum into 2026, we held an in-person Network meeting where we touched base on the purpose and mission of the network and explored ideas to strengthen our goals with future event ideas in 2026. The session started with an informal icebreaker, during which participants described the roles they play within their departments and the ‘problems’ they are currently thinking about. Our audience represented a diverse range of academic and professional backgrounds, including IT, marketing, research associates, and librarians. The attendees touched upon several issues they have faced in the data space that broadly fell within:

• Data security: Challenges around building secure data pipelines and robust infrastructure for sensitive research data, alongside the responsible handling of data across the research lifecycle. Participants highlighted governance and stewardship issues associated with large datasets containing demographic, socio-economic, and other sensitive personal information, including ethical considerations around access, control, and long-term oversight.

• Data management and sustainability: Issues relating to the development and implementation of Data Management Plans (DMPs) and broader research data planning, particularly when working with data generated by others or sourced from repositories. Concerns were also raised about data sustainability, including long-term preservation, ongoing accessibility, and the obsolescence of file formats and software.

• Capacity and infrastructure building: The need to invest in skills and organisational capacity through internships, training programmes, and ongoing support, as well as effective liaison with external organisations. Appropriate technical and organisational infrastructure was seen as essential to enable secure, sustainable, and ethical data practices.

• Data quality and analytics: Challenges in ensuring quality assurance, consistency, and reliability when working with large and complex datasets, highlighting the importance of robust standards, validation processes, and analytical practices.

• Open research and ethics: Tensions between open research practices and ethical considerations, particularly copyright at the disciplinary level and the need for clearer communication. Participants also noted complexities in working with community-based datasets, including identifying copyright holders, managing rights and consent, and building trust and buy-in for responsible data sharing at scale.

In the second half of the session, participants were introduced to an activity titled “8 minutes: 8 ideas”, in which they were prompted to jot down eight ideas within an eight-minute timeframe, with a focus on suggesting theme-based sessions for the Data Stewards Network. Participants were then asked individually to share the idea they considered most important and impactful from their 8 ideas, before all participants subsequently voted on the ideas, using green and yellow stickers to indicate preferences for more and less favoured ideas (see Figure 1, above):

• Problems of researchers’ data; peer to peer problem solving; listening and Troubleshooting session (3 votes)

• Creating pathways between Archives and Repositories; streamlining workflows; cohesive infrastructure (5 votes)

• Shared infrastructure; funding opportunities (1 vote)

• Data Clinic : People attend with data related issues, and troubleshoot ideas (9 votes)

• Workshops for sensitive data classification and handling (3 votes)

• GenAI RDM Hackathon (7 votes)

• Sharing opportunities for collaboration; facilitating collaboration (8 votes)

• How University systems work - e.g., themed sessions on ORDA, DMPs, DPIAs, Data Sharing Agreements, SAP - practical sessions where people come and find out how to use them (4 votes)

The majority of participants voted for the idea of a session called ‘Data Clinic’, which would provide an open platform to discuss issues individuals face in the process of handling data and to share ideas for overcoming them - although the facilitation of collaboration opportunities and an RDM Hackathon also scored highly!

Next steps: We’re going to design a programme of activities and events for the academic year ahead, as well as working with the N8 and CaSDaR Network+ on some cross-institutional events - so watch this space! 

Interesting in contributing to a future event? Email us at data-stewardship-network@sheffield.ac.uk or complete this form.