Spotlight on: Bjørn Peare Bartholdy
Every other week, the Thematic DCCs and the Data Steward Interest Group (DSIG) put the spotlight on one research data steward working in the Netherlands, to stimulate knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning.
What drew you towards the research data management field?
My own terrible research data management practices. During my PhD studies, I started exploring Open Science and the possibility of sharing my data and code. That's also when I realised that my data were a mess and I was not working very reproducibly at all! I wanted to help others avoid being in my situation. My Open Science mentor (unbeknownst to her), Esther Plomp worked as a Data Steward; and, with her help, I started applying for Data Steward positions and ended up getting my current position at TU Delft, where I'm surrounded by an awesome group of colleagues!
What is an activity/task of your role that you find yourself looking forward to?
The thing I enjoy most is advocating and training research data management and Open Science practices. Really anything related to Open Science. I have already been able to participate in Open Science-related topics on various levels, including CODECHECK, Open Access publishing, The Carpentries workshops, the TU Delft R Café, the GHOST Collective, and more! I look forward to exploring others in the future.
What is something unexpected that you can offer help with, if a colleague reaches out to you?
I have been using the R programming language for a number of years now, and am happy to help a colleague with any code-related issues. I am also comfortable using Quarto, Git(Hub), and Linux.
What do you think your community of research data professionals is missing?
A secret handshake.
What is a topic you would want to collaborate on with others?
Developing new or existing open source tools and training materials for researchers to help improve reproducibility and research data management.
How would you like to see your current field of work evolve in the next 5 years?
Hopefully by then my tasks related to topics in both research data management and Open Science will have largely moved from creating awareness to assisting with practical implementation. And researchers will approach me early on in the research cycle with intrinsic motivation rather than policy compliance.
Get in touch with Bjørn: Website | LinkedIn | Orcid, | Mastodon
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