DOI: 10.5073/20211013-105447
title: Dataset: survey about research data management in agricultural sciences in Germany

description: 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.