Title : 
 Dataset : survey about research data management in agricultural sciences in Germany 

 Abstract : 
 This dataset is the result of an online survey the authors conducted in the German agricultural science community in 2020 . The survey inquires not only about the status quo , but also explicitly about the wishes and needs of users , representing the agricultural scientific research domain , of the in - progress NFDI ( national research data infrastructure ) . Questions cover information about produced and ( re-)used data , data quality aspects , information about the use of standards , publication practices and legal aspects of agricultural research data , the current situation in research data management in regards to awareness , consulting and curricula as well as needs of the agricultural community in respect to future developments . In total , the questionnaire contained 52 questions and was conducted using the Community Edition of the Open Source Survey Tool LimeSurvey ( Version 3.19.3 ; LimeSurvey GmbH ) . The questions were accessible in English and German . The first set of questions ( Questions 1 - 4 ) addressed the respondent ’s professional background ( i.e. career status , affiliation and subject area , but no personal data ) and the user group . The user groups included data users , data providers as well as infrastructure service and information service providers . Subsequent questions were partly user group specific . All questions , the corresponding question types and addressed user groups can be found in the questionnaire files ( Survey-Questions-2020-DE.pdf German Version ; Survey-Questions-2020-EN.pdf English Version ) . The survey was accessible online between June 26th and July 21st 2020 , could be completed anonymously and took about 20 minutes . The survey was promoted in an undirected manner via mail lists of agricultural institutes and agricultural - specific professional societies in Germany , via social media ( e.g. Twitter ) and announced during the first community workshop of NFDI4Agri on July 15th 2020 and other scientific events . After closing the survey , we exported the data from the LimeSurvey tool and initially screened it . We considered all questionnaires that contained at least one answered question in addition to the respondent ’s professional background information ( Questions 1 - 4 ) . In total , we received 196 questionnaires of which 160 were completed in full ( although not always every answer option was used , empty cells are filled with “ N / A ” ) . The main data set contains all standardized answers from the respondents . For anonymization , respondents ’ individual answers , for instance , free text answers , comments and details in the category " other ” were removed from the main data set . The main data set only lists whether such information was provided ( “ Yes ” ) or not ( “ No ” or “ N / A ” ) . In an additional file respondents ’ individual answers of the questions 4 - 52 are listed alphabetically , so that it is not possible to trace the data back . In the rare cases where only one person has provided such individual information in an answer , it is traceable but does not contain any sensitive data . The main data set containing answers of the 196 questionnaires received can be found in the file Survey-2020-Main-DataSet-Answers.xlsx . The subsidary data set containing the respondents ’ individual answers ( most answers are in German and are not translated ) of the questions 4 - 52 , for instance , free text answers , comments and details in the category " other ” ( alphabetically listed ) can be found in Survey-2020-Subsidary-DataSet-Free_Text_Answers.xlsx .