# Normalisation options

As discussed in the previous section, the "Towards Responsible Publishing" survey was distributed electronically to researchers across the globe, aiming for wide distribution to capture diverse perspectives from various regions. However, due to differences between regions in the size of the researcher population, the number of public ORCID records, and the response rates, the number of respondents varies significantly, going from 224 in Oceania to 1318 in Western Europe.

Because of that, you can choose to see the survey results on this website according to their absolute numbers - showing the unweighted count of responses and providing a straightforward representation of the data - or choose between two types of normalisation inspired by the bicameral legislative system seen in many countries. In such systems, there are typically two houses of representation:

**House of Representatives:** The number of representatives is usually proportional to the population of individual states or provinces. The idea is that these representatives will equally represent the voices of each citizen. Our normalisation approach to guarantee a proportional voice for each researcher globally is to weigh the number of responses according to the size of the researcher population in each region, using estimates from UNESCO, as seen in the following table:

Table 4. Researcher population (in full-time equivalent) estimates by region. 

<table data-full-width="true"><thead><tr><th>Continent </th><th>Region</th><th align="right">Researcher population</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Africa </td><td>Northern Africa </td><td align="right">189.000 </td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>Sub-Saharan Africa </td><td align="right">93.000</td></tr><tr><td>Americas </td><td>Central America and the Caribbean </td><td align="right">53.000 </td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Northern America </td><td align="right">1.705.000</td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>South America </td><td align="right">286.000</td></tr><tr><td>Asia </td><td>South-eastern Asia </td><td align="right">422.000</td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>Southern Asia </td><td align="right">615.000 </td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>Eastern and Central Asia </td><td align="right">3.641.000 </td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>Western Asia </td><td align="right">272.000 </td></tr><tr><td>Europe </td><td>Northern Europe </td><td align="right">567.000 </td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>Southern Europe </td><td align="right">454.000 </td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>Western Europe </td><td align="right">1.092.000 </td></tr><tr><td>  </td><td>Eastern Europe </td><td align="right">725.000 </td></tr><tr><td>Oceania </td><td>Oceania </td><td align="right">147.000 </td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: <http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=3685>, weighted by population

**Senate:** Each state or province has the same number of senators regardless of population, ensuring their voices can be heard equally. Our approach is to normalise the data per region so that the size of the research population or the response rate of a region does not influence the results, allowing for a view of the results where every region has equal weight.&#x20;

Users can filter and detail visualisations from different perspectives, whether they select to view results with or without normalisation or the method chosen. This allows them to see the viewpoints of each region or continent as they see fit.<br>


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://coalitions-trp-survey.cwts.nl/normalisation-options.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.