Professionalising traditional and infrastructure research roles in data science

Making diverse data science roles more visible and informing policymakers of the future skills needs in data science careers.

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Project status

Ongoing

Related programmes

Tools, practices and systems
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Introduction

In the ever-evolving landscape of data science, specialised roles have become integral to supporting interdisciplinary collaboration and guiding the adoption of open, reproducible, inclusive and ethical practices.

This project aims to address the gap in the policy landscape that would standardise and strengthen specialised research infrastructure roles alongside the traditional roles in data science. The goal is to professionalise dedicated specialised as well as general roles for ensuring high-quality ethical research at institutional and national levels.

 

Explaining the science

The National Audit Office report on ‘Challenges in using data across government’ highlights the current gap in data skills at several levels including storage, management, architecture, planning and governance. The majority of these skills are essential for traditional data science research roles, and even more important for professionalising modern roles such as research engineers, data stewards, community managers, research application managers and more. These modern roles are often termed research infrastructure roles and are becoming important alternative career pathways for researchers.


The skills gap identified by the National Audit Office is compounded by a lack of clarity in definitions for data science roles and their skill requirements. The National Data Strategy states that there is no widely agreed definition of data skills and the role descriptors are used inconsistently across different institutions. Therefore, to enable the upskilling of the current workforce, develop more national and international consistency in hiring practices for these roles, and identify the skills needed by the next generation of data professionals, we need to close this knowledge gap by developing clear definitions of roles in data science and the skills needed to perform these roles.


This project seeks to lead in this area in collaboration with experts and diverse stakeholders curating both traditional and modern data science roles and skills to move forward with their professionalisation. These curated resources will be communicated broadly to inform national policies.
 

Please explore our GitHub repository for additional resources.

Project aims

The aim of this project is to fill the gap in our knowledge about data science roles and the skills needed for careers in data science.

The objectives of this project are:
 

  • Curating and centralising definitions, role descriptors and skill lists for traditional and modern data science roles in collaboration with stakeholders from national and international institutions -- for use in policy, hiring and career development.
     
  • Publishing a position paper focused on the newly established Research Community Management team in The Alan Turing Institute's Tools, Practices and Systems Programme and making comparisons to other data science roles professionalised at the Turing. This will serve as a prototype for creating position papers on other modern and lesser established data science roles.
     
  • Gain relevant skills by working with policy experts, networking with other awardees and collaborators, and utilise resources enabled by the Skills Policy Award in developing high-quality outputs that strengthen policies for the professionalisation of modern data science roles alongside the traditional roles in the UK.
     

Recent updates

Project outputs

Data Science Team Personas: case study from The Alan Turing Institute 

Evolving Professional Roles in Data Science across Industries and Academic Research 

Podcast Episodes discussing the project 

National stakeholder workshop: Mapping the current skills landscape

We ran a workshop on 2 October 2023 in which we invited representatives from UK data science organisations from across different sectors. The aim of the workshop was to discuss and record the data science landscape in terms of skills needed for current and future roles in data science.

We used existing skills and competency frameworks, such as the Alliance for Data Science Professionals Standards, as starting points for discussions and expanded these for existing and newer data science roles. We aimed to capture the breadth and depth of the career opportunities and skills needed for them in data science.

Workshop summary

Contributions to other projects and events

The Hidden REF and the Festival of Hidden REF 

The Alan Turing Institute and The Turing Way supported the inaugural Festival of Hidden REF that took place in Bristol on Thursday 21 September 2023. This unique event brought together policymakers, publishers, and people in non-traditional research roles to explore ways of improving the assessment of research in the UK.

Founded in 2021, the Hidden REF is a grassroots campaign aimed at securing recognition for non-traditional research roles and practices that research assessment bodies have historically overlooked. The Festival of Hidden REF was the first opportunity for the members of that movement to gather in one place, exchange ideas, share stories, and collectively discuss a more positive way forward for the UK research community.

Taking place at M Shed, an innovative dockside museum space on Bristol’s Princes Wharf, the Festival of Hidden REF was a free one-day event made up of lectures, break-out groups, expert panels, and more. The event was attended by policymakers from across government and academia, as well as those involved in designing research assessment frameworks in the UK and abroad. 

At the Festival, Emma gave a keynote talk about 'Hidden roles: why they need to be recognised?' - slides from the talk can be found on zenodo here. Emma also ran a workshop session on Hidden roles with Cassandra Gould Van Praag (Senior Research Community Manager) - slides from the workshop can be found here.

You can also listen to a podcast from this event, which includes an interview of Emma: [EN] Hidden no more - The HiddenREF Festival Sep '23 (buzzsprout.com)

Panel at Year of Open Science - Culminating Conference

Hosted by Center for Open Science (COS), in collaboration with NASA the Year of Open Science Culminating Conference showcased achievements with a goal to foster coalition-building and propel the momentum of ongoing work spurred by the Year of Open Science. The project team as part of The Turing Way designed and hosted a panel "Aligning Professional Roles and Incentives with Open Research", which was chaired by Arielle Bennett and co-facilitated by Alexandra Araujo Alvarez.

The panellists Neil Chue Hong (Software Sustainability Institute) and Sandra Gesing (US-RSE) highlighted the progress made in Research Software Engineering, and Esther Plomp (TU Delft) and Joseph Muliaro Wafula (African Open Science Platform) discussed Data Stewardship.

You can watch the video on YouTube.

Organisers

Photo of Emma Karoune

Dr Emma Karoune

Senior Researcher - Research Community Building | Tools, Practices and Systems

Contact info

For more information, contact Emma Karoune ([email protected]).