The Portal Project mention using git and excel with data validation for data entry, which seem like a fairly good approach to me, but my field is medicine - getting a bunch of my colleagues to use and understand git is not something I’d feel particularly compelled to do…
The other options you mention look like great tools, but for my needs they’re a bit too “advanced”. Mostly I’d just want to enter integers/doubles, factors, strings and dates.
I’ve also considered using google spreadsheets with the googlesheets package, but most likely I won’t be able to due to GDPR (and ethical reasons).
Could some sort of SQL database be what I’m looking for? I have no knowledge of SQL, but if there’s an easy way to setup a report form interface (website with login) I think it might be worth learning the neccessary basics.
Summarised, for my field of research, the optimal workflow would look something like this:
Customisable, but simple data entry interface ->
Database (preferably local unless very secure and somehow approved within GDPR) with API to R ->
Import to R ->
Prewritten assertr script so I can hunt people down when they mess up