Context: Digital age capabilities, including the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and agentic systems, are poised to transform the practice of scientific research. However, these opportunities are not equally accessible across all fields. Some fields have long invested in the necessary scientific infrastructure to make their knowledge and data “legible to machines,” as exemplified by resources like the Gene Ontology in the life sciences. The field of democracy studies is getting prepared for these opportunities. Our knowledge, concepts, and data are rich and well-developed for human understanding, but often lack the formal, machine-readable structure required to unlock the full potential of computational approaches. Some of this work is newly underway, most notably by the Monitoring Electoral Democracy initiative. Communities of scholarship and practice can draw upon resources to make advances in these areas, including the FAIR data principles, the GO FAIR Initiative, the GO FAIR Foundation, and the International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA).
Statement of Need: The current data ecosystem for democracy studies has not yet established the norms, practices, and standards necessary for machine use. This workshop helps address this gap by identifying data practices and semantic resources which are essential for making knowledge machine-interoperable and data machine-linkable.
Goals: Drawing on the FAIR data principles, and building upon work underway, the convening participants will identify and target for investment new scholarly resources and practices that help prepare the field for the transformative potential of AI. Potential outcomes may include the identification of a need for persistent identifiers, formal vocabularies, or knowledge graphs and ontologies. Participants will identify a concrete set of “next steps” that democracy scholars and pratitioners can take to advance their knowledge, enhance their collaboration, and amplify the impact of their work.
Local Host: GESIS Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences
Funding: Democracy Catalyst Funds of The Democracy Initiative at The University of Notre Dame