Trends in ROR Data

[Steve Canham]

Hi All,

With the community meeting coming soon, it seemed a good time to do another short summary of some of the trends in ROR data. It covers all data published in Schema v2, i.e. from v1.45.2 in April 2024 through to v2.1 this month – 31 distinct versions. The document is attached – I hope it is of some interest.

There is not too much text – much of the information is in the 9 included graphs. As I have finally weaned myself off of Windows, the document was written in LibreOffice writer, (on Linux), though in an allegedly MS Word compatible format. The compatibility doesn’t extend to imported spreadsheet graphs however, so those graphs are imported as images. It should open OK in either MS Word or LO Writer.

The data was generated using the small Rust program I use to download the ROR data dumps. As well as importing, lightly processing and reporting on any specific data dump, the program summarises key features of each version, and can export those summaries (as CSV files). Those files were the basis for the report. If any other data dump importers are interested the program is available on my GitHub page, at https://github.com/steve-canham/imp_ror.

Cheers

Steve

[Amanda French]

That's a really interesting analysis, Steve! Thanks for sharing it. You'll see some alternate visualizations about ROR data (spefically regional coverage and increase in domains) at the annual meeting Community Update on Tuesday -- I've just seen a preview of them. The location analysis we did was by region, not country, and doing it that way seems to indicate more strongly that ROR is "becoming more global." Will be interested to hear what you think. 

Regarding names -- aliases, labels, and acronyms -- I think we're due for an updated version of the blog post on name policies in ROR we did almost four years ago, because yes, there have been some significant changes since then. 

Am just about to issue another release announcement, which I hope will be another data point that reduces the mean time gap between versions. :) 

Amanda