Stewards of Data

Filled with actionable guides and real-world examples, Stewards of Data: A Practical Handbook for Undergraduate Researchers in Engineering and Applied Sciences allows readers to utilize the provided templates and guides almost immediately. In today's world, data is ubiquitous and AI is growing exponentially. Practicing ethical data management is, therefore, crucial. Ensuring that data is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable is essential. This book is an interdisciplinary effort aimed at embedding ethical data life-cycle management education into undergraduate research programs. The authors present a Data Steward Framework, which serves as a guide for undergraduate researchers, the graduate students who mentor them, postdocs, and faculty. The toolkit prompts mentors and undergraduates to reason through ethical considerations, future consequences, and trade-off decisions as they plan, collect, describe, manage, visualize, curate, and share their data.