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Record W4417506594 · doi:10.29173/iq1167

Assessing the landscape for discovery and access to historical Canadian census data

2025· article· W4417506594 on OpenAlexaffabout
Graeme Campbell, Katie Cuyler, Alex Guindon

Bibliographic record

VenueIASSIST Quarterly · 2025
Typearticle
Language
FieldMathematics
TopicCensus and Population Estimation
Canadian institutionsConcordia University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsCensusAmerican Community SurveyPublic useData collectionUsabilityPopulation

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The Canadian census is a primary source of information about Canada and the people who live there, and that information is used by researchers, the private sector, public servants and residents. However, access to Canadian census data is fragmented and inconsistent, with no single source of Census data for all census years, or in all census data formats. This is a barrier to research, making systematic analysis, discovery, and reuse difficult. This article provides an overview of the current landscape of Canadian census portals by data format. It includes an analysis of the coverage and usability of census portals and demonstrates the outstanding need for a single comprehensive access point for Canadian census data.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.105
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.410
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesOpen science
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.994
Threshold uncertainty score0.676

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.1050.410
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0230.043
Science and technology studies0.0150.013
Scholarly communication0.0260.022
Open science0.0060.012
Research integrity0.0020.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0070.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.130
GPT teacher head0.408
Teacher spread0.278 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designQualitative
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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