The state of open data and the quantitative turn in international relations

Research data in the humanities and social sciences is evolving rapidly, underpinned by growing adoption of journal and institutional data policies and infrastructure. The quantitative turn in international relations over the past decades has been possible in part due to the existence of numerous open, longitudinal datasets maintained by international organisations, UN agencies, researchers, and NGOs. The open data movement over the last decade has provided the political impetus to open up transnational and domestic datasets. Yet numerous challenges remain given the disparity of resourcing among producers of non-official datasets such as NGOs and gaps between the open data and research communities. This poster will provide an overview of these issues and initiatives that seek to close the gap.