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Article History

Received: 11 March 2024

Accepted: 26 September 2024

First Online: 17 October 2024

Competing interests

: The author declares no competing interests.

: This survey was conducted as part of the ROADMAP project, which abides by the ethical principles and regulations of both the Leading Project Institution (INRAE) and Funding Institution (European Commission). Before launching the project, we had our research approved by the Data Protection Officer of INRAE (the institution leading the project). The Data Protection Officer is responsible for evaluating the compliance of research projects with both ethical criteria and data protection, and at the time the project commenced (in 2019), was the only body within INRAE with the capacity for evaluating and assessing ethical aspects of research projects, as INRAE’s Ethics Committee was only registered as an Institutional Review Board (IRB) with the Office for Human Research Protection (OHRP) of the United States Department of Health (IRB00013805/IORG0011649) in October 2022. The Data Protection Officer of INRAE asked us to conduct a self-assessment of the project and this self-assessment grid is based on the ethical regulations of the European Commission, the European Union’s Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the standards set by the Declaration of Helsinki. Following this evaluation, the Data Protection Officer found that the project met the required ethical criteria and approved it. In particular, the ethical self-assessment established that the respondents are not patients and the research does not involve any sampling or the use of health data. Its direct or indirect objective is not to understand the mechanisms of the human body’s functioning, test procedures or products for diagnostic, treatment, or prevention purposes. It does not involve vulnerable individuals and does not pose any risk (physical, psychological, or otherwise). It does not collect any sensitive data (religious, sexual, political orientations, etc.). Following the positive evaluation of both ethical issues and personal data protection by INRAE’s Data Protection Officer, the Data Management Plan (DMP) is based on both the ethical self-assessment approved by our DPO and the self-assessment grid provided by the European Commission for H2020 projects. Since this research falls into the category of studies “involving human participants” who are “volunteers for social or human sciences research,” I followed the relevant recruitment, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and informed consent procedures. The other criteria correspond to those considered in the Declaration of Helsinki and confirmed that this study did not involve patients or vulnerable individuals, did not expose participants to any physical, biological, or psychological risks, and no health or sensitive data was collected or used in the project. Indeed, this research does not fall within the scope of medical research as it is a social science research project based solely on interviews about veterinarians’ professional practices. I followed the measures implemented for personal data protection (the audio recordings of interviews were destroyed after transcription, transcripts of interviews have been rigorously anonymized and the data was stored on a secure server). Our Data Management Plan outlines all these elements, as well as the measures implemented for personal data protection and the procedures for recruiting and informing participants. It was officially validated by the European Commission’s bodies responsible for ethical and GDPR evaluations of research projects in 2019 (Grant Agreement N° 817626).

: The interviewer obtained the respondents’ informed consent both for conducting this research and for using interview data in publications. Indeed, before the interview, the research project’s objectives, the survey process, and the ways in which the results of this work could be accessed were communicated to the participants. They were also reminded that their participation was free, voluntary, and revocable (participants could skip certain questions or could request to turn off the recorder if they wished).