What’s new:

1️⃣ Extended time series

🔹 Standards → previously up to 2023, now extended until 2025

🔹 TC-membership → previously up to 2023, now extended until 2025

🔹 Certifications → previously up to 2020, now extended until 2023

2️⃣ Integration with ISO Open Data

Standards: merged with ISO Deliverables Metadata, expanded coverage (70,861 → 78,312), new Versions dataset, improved _iso variables.

Historical: TC creation dataset fully rebuilt from ISO Technical Committees Metadata, new variables and improved quality.

📊 Insights:

China still leads in P-memberships, widening the gap to Germany

Azerbaijan shows the fastest growth: 18× more P-memberships since 2020

Some TCs grew spectacularly: JTC 1/SC 42 (AI) from 14 → 46 P-members, TC 331 (Biodiversity) from 11 → 44

Database: shiny.uio.no/standat/

With this article, I would also like to demonstrate how powerful a tool web scraping can be. I hope many of us moving forward will make their scraped datasets public (if ethically viable). They are important resources, especially for topics that have scarcity of quantitative data available.

Many of us are familiar with some ISO standards, like the ISO country codes. There are thousands of such documents specifying details on all from the dimensions of screws to good environmental management. How are these standards negotiated? What impact do they have on international collaboration?

Here I present a database containing various information on ISO standards -- the StanDat database! Why is that useful, you may ask. Well, standards are the invisible lubricant of much international cooperation.