Introduction

The AIMS team initiated the AIMS User Impact Survey towards the end of last year. The survey sought to gather feedback from AIMS users’ on the

• AIMS platform,
• AIMS products and services, and
• The impact of AIMS’ products and services on users.

The Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS) new website was launched on the 23rd of September 2014 with a new theme, look and feel, and new functionalities. Therefore, this survey was carried out at an opportune time to obtain feedback on the new AIMS website. AIMS is the portal of choice for agricultural information management specialists with an interest in standards, technology and good practices for open access and open data.

Methodology 

The questionnaire had 27 questions, which were both open and close-ended questions and were distributed through the SurveyMonkey® tool. The questions were grouped into the following categories, (i) background user information (ii) AIMS Products and Services, (iii) AIMS Webinars and (iv) AIMS Notifications and (v) other areas of Improvement. The survey was sent to three groups – (a) registered AIMS users, (b) AGRIS data providers and (c) other online networks. The survey was opened for a month and there were 178 people who responded . More than 54% of the participants completed all the questions; understandable since 38% were not registered AIMS members.

Summary of Results

The respondents provided valuable feedback in almost all the questions. In summary, the survey attracted respondents from 68 countries.

• Three top regions by participation were - Europe (32%), Asia (28%) and South America (18%).
• AIMS has managed to retain old members and also gained new members.
• Most members log at-least once a week or once every fortnight with most users belonging to the Open Access – Group of Interest.
• The mostly used products and services on AIMS are Recommendations and Good Practices, Event Service, Webinars and AIMS Newsletter. Users are satisfied with AIMS Products and Services.
• The new Website is well appreciated and users find it easy to use and navigate, helpful suggestions for improvement were offered. AIMS Notifications are useful and 94% of the users wanted to continue to receive them (AIMS Alerts and Notifications).
• Webinars are well appreciated and suggestions for their improvements were offered.

The survey results are important in ensuring the the service is continuously being improved and a follow up webinar is on course to explain some of the new functionalities and directions for 2015 and beyond

Read full report here