The debate in German archives on research data is still in its very early stages (”in den Kinderschuhen”). Even an agreed-upon definition of research data is lacking in the archival science.
G. Maier, D. Fähle, A. Neuburger and E. Klindworth advocate a ”sensu lato” understanding of research data, covering all scans, digital finding aids and catalogue metadata produced by archives.
Other archival professionals, like Ch. Salewski, E. Hamidy and F. Gelati, remain faithful to the traditional, ”sensu stricto” definition, which sees research data as the product of a research activity tranforming scientific evidence into machine-processable datasets.
If the sensu lato definition gives credit to archives and archival professionals for their often-undervalued and overlooked scientific work, the latter, sensu stricto option is much more aligned with national and international literature on research data and digital preservation.