Survey metadata and blank survey of the research project: “Unlocking the potential of open science for knowledge mobilisation” (2024)

This repository contains metadata and the full survey instrument from the research project <i>“Unlocking the potential of open science for knowledge mobilisation".</i> The survey collected information on how professionals involved in ecology and evolutionary biology rate their familiarity, engagement, attitudes and perceptions with open science.The metadata dataset comprises responses collected through an online Qualtrics survey between 23 April and 12 August 2024. Participants represent a diverse range of stakeholder groups involved in the research ecosystem, including universities and research institutes, research funders, publishers, journals, repositories, governments, commercial organisations, learned societies, and other affiliated groups. Recruitment was conducted via direct email outreach, organisational contacts, social media (X), Slack groups, forums, mailing lists, and snowball dissemination.The survey captures demographic and professional characteristics (e.g., gender, career stage, years of experience, stakeholder affiliation, country of residence), alongside multiple dimensions of open science engagement and perception. These include self-reported familiarity with open science, awareness of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (2021), participation in Open Science practices (e.g., Open Access, FAIR data and software, Open Methods, Open Licences), and associations with both positive and negative aspects of open science. Respondents also rated the extent to which their affiliated stakeholder groups embrace, should adopt, and benefit from open science, using 0–10 scales. Additionally, agreement with eleven statements adapted from the UNESCO Recommendation was assessed on a 0–10 Likert scale.The study was approved by the University of Sheffield Ethics Review Procedure (Application 058550). Participation was voluntary, informed consent was obtained electronically, and all data were anonymised prior to deposition. No directly identifiable personal information is included in the released dataset.This repository includes a metadata file detailing variable definitions of the restricted data and the blank survey instrument to ensure transparency. To support reproducibility of the analysis pipeline, a synthetic dataset and the associated R project have been deposited on Zenodo.Zagrodzka ZB. Characteristics-of-Professionals-Involved-in-Open-Science-in-Ecology-and-Evolution. Zenodo; 2026. doi:10.5281/zenodo.18889104 Available: https://zenodo.org/records/18889104The data underlying the findings of this study contain potentially identifiable participant information. As participants did not consent to public sharing of their data, the anonymised dataset has been deposited in the University of Sheffield ORDA institutional repository under restricted access.