Spotlight on: Bert Huizing
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?
Before entering the research data management field I already worked with secondary (financial economic) data sources and scientific researchers using these sources.
What is an activity/task of your role that you find yourself looking forward to?
I do like giving advice to researchers regarding their research data management plans, showing GDPR compliancy and rate of FAIRness. I am still impressed by the diversity in data collection methods and the many categories of research data. I like to deliver introductory trainings for our new PhD students, I consider my job as a data steward as very rewarding.
What is something unexpected that you can offer help with, if a colleague reaches out to you?
I can help my colleagues with working with more sophisticated Excel or SPSS functions.
What do you think your community of research data professionals is missing?
I think the RDM community is still missing a own profile. I guess this can be because of interrelations with our work with legal, ethical and policy aspects.
What is a topic you would want to collaborate on with others?
An interesting topic is to bring research data management support further and to connect it more with other relevant disciplines in research support, like open science, funding, IT, legal and communication.
How would you like to see your current field of work evolve in the next 5 years?
I am not sure, I must admit the field I work in has developed so fast in a few years. But I think that AI will be more important the next years, this because of ethical and legal issues with it.
Get in touch with Bert: University of Groningen staff page | ORCID | LinkedIn profile
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