FAIR Vocabularies in Population Research: report of the IUSSP-CODATA Working Group on FAIR Vocabularies
Résumé
This report describes the role of controlled vocabularies
in the documentation and dissemination of demographic
data in the light of the FAIR principles that all data
should be “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and
Reusable” by both humans and machines (Wilkinson et
al., 2016). Population research is an empirically focused
field with a long tradition of widely shared, easily
accessible, data collections. The FAIR Principles point
to ways that this tradition can be enhanced by taking
advantage of emerging standards and technologies.
Our work builds on the “Ten Simple Rules for making
a vocabulary FAIR” (Cox et al., 2021), prepared by a
group formed at a workshop convened by CODATA and
DDI to describe how a FAIR vocabulary will work with
international standards for documenting and sharing
social science data.
Controlled vocabularies play a central role in data
sharing by associating data with concepts and by
defining which categories or codes may be applied.
FAIR vocabularies specify globally accessible persistent
identifiers to distinguish data items that are the same
from those that are different. Consider the most basic
variable in demographic analysis: age. The Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
has a list of 643 age categories, while the UN Population
Division copes with more than 1100 age groups. If the
meanings of variables in a dataset are only available
through human-readable documentation, like a pdf,
harmonizing data from two providers will remain a
tedious manual process. However, if the age categories
are linked to persistent identifiers in machine actionable
metadata, software can be programmed to harmonize
age groupings. If these operations are performed
across dozens of variables in hundreds of data sources,
enormous amounts of human time will be saved.
Construction of the infrastructure for FAIR data has
begun. Demographic concepts are already included
in vocabularies developed by other disciplines, like
medicine, with definitions that conflict with usage in
population research. Therefore, there is a need for
a FAIR vocabulary of demographic concepts
endorsed by an authoritative institution in the
field of population science.
IUSSP has a long history of working with the UN
and other agencies to define demographic concepts
(International Union for the Scientific Study of
Population, 1954; Vincent, 1953). Those efforts currently
exist in electronic forms (Demopædia and Demovoc)
that provide a base for a multilingual FAIR Vocabulary
of Demography. We argue that a FAIR Vocabulary
of Demography will have important benefits for the
population research community represented by IUSSP,
and we conclude with recommendations for IUSSP and
other important organizations.
In addition to summarizing the activities of the Working
Group, this report is intended to serve as an introduction
to the standards and infrastructure used to share social
science data. Most demographers have never heard of
URIs, SDMX, or DDI, even though they use services
from the UN, ILO, OECD, CESSDA, IPUMS, and
other organizations that depend on these standards.
Understanding key features of the international data
infrastructure will help IUSSP leadership to influence
its development.
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