Retrieve data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) API. UIS provides public access to more than 4,000 indicators focusing on education, science and technology, culture, and communication.
The package is part of the econdataverse family of packages aimed at helping economists and financial professionals work with sovereign-level economic data.
💡 The UIS API has no known rate limiting, but there is a 100,000 record limit for each request. For larger data downloads, the UIS recommends its [Bulk Data Download Service (BDDS)](https://databrowser.uis.unesco.org/resources/bulk.
You can install uisapi from CRAN via:
install.packages("uisapi")You can install the development version of uisapi from
GitHub with:
# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("tidy-intelligence/r-uisapi")Load the package:
library(uisapi)To fetch indicators for specific entities, you can call:
uis_get(
entities = c("BRA", "USA"),
indicators = c("CR.1", "CR.2"),
start_year = 2010,
end_year = 2020
)
#> # A tibble: 36 × 4
#> entity_id indicator_id year value
#> <chr> <chr> <int> <dbl>
#> 1 BRA CR.1 2011 89.9
#> 2 BRA CR.1 2012 91.6
#> 3 BRA CR.1 2013 91.5
#> 4 BRA CR.1 2014 92.9
#> 5 BRA CR.1 2015 93.2
#> 6 BRA CR.1 2016 93.8
#> 7 BRA CR.1 2017 94.6
#> 8 BRA CR.1 2018 95.1
#> 9 BRA CR.1 2019 95.7
#> 10 BRA CR.1 2020 96.3
#> # ℹ 26 more rowsYou can get information about the available entities via:
uis_get_entities()
#> # A tibble: 467 × 4
#> entity_id entity_name entity_type region_group
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 ABW Aruba NATIONAL <NA>
#> 2 AFG Afghanistan NATIONAL <NA>
#> 3 AGO Angola NATIONAL <NA>
#> 4 AIA Anguilla NATIONAL <NA>
#> 5 ALA Ã…land Islands NATIONAL <NA>
#> 6 ALB Albania NATIONAL <NA>
#> 7 AND Andorra NATIONAL <NA>
#> 8 ANT Netherlands Antilles NATIONAL <NA>
#> 9 ARE United Arab Emirates NATIONAL <NA>
#> 10 ARG Argentina NATIONAL <NA>
#> # ℹ 457 more rowsThe list of available indicators can be retrieved via:
uis_get_indicators()
#> # A tibble: 4,247 × 7
#> indicator_id indicator_name theme last_data_update last_data_update_des…¹
#> <chr> <chr> <chr> <date> <chr>
#> 1 10 Official entrance… EDUC… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 2 10403 Start month of th… EDUC… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 3 10404 End month of the … EDUC… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 4 10405 Start of the acad… EDUC… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 5 10406 End of the academ… EDUC… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 6 13 Theoretical durat… EDUC… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 7 200101 Total population … DEMO… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 8 200144 Population aged 1… DEMO… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 9 200151 Population aged 6… DEMO… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> 10 200343 Population aged 1… DEMO… 2025-02-23 February 2025 Data Re…
#> # ℹ 4,237 more rows
#> # ℹ abbreviated name: ¹​last_data_update_description
#> # ℹ 2 more variables: data_availability <list>, entity_types <list>The API supports versioning and you can retrieve all versions using:
uis_get_versions()
#> # A tibble: 6 × 4
#> version publication_date description theme
#> <chr> <dttm> <chr> <list>
#> 1 20250225-2ae60fad 2025-02-27 15:29:19 February 2025 DR <tibble>
#> 2 20241121-61101499 2024-11-21 23:37:39 SCCI Data refresh – Nov 2024 -… <tibble>
#> 3 20241113-98786d81 2024-11-21 18:57:35 SCCI data refresh <tibble>
#> 4 20241030-9d4d089e 2024-10-30 17:28:00 Drop data for CIV on MYS for 1… <tibble>
#> 5 20240913-b8ca1963 2024-09-15 14:44:07 Glossary Update <tibble>
#> 6 20240910-b5ad4d82 2024-09-11 06:15:13 September 2024 Data Release (f… <tibble>If you are only interested in the current default version, you can
use the parameter default_only:
uis_get_versions(default_only = TRUE)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 4
#> version publication_date description theme
#> <chr> <dttm> <chr> <list>
#> 1 20250225-2ae60fad 2025-02-27 15:29:19 February 2025 DR <tibble [4 × 3]>The API will only return 100,000 records for each query, if more data is requested, the API call with fail with a 400 http status code. If you need more data, then UIS recommends using the Bulk Data Download Service (BDDS). You can get a list of available files via:
uis_bulk_files()
#> # A tibble: 11 × 3
#> file_name file_url last_updated_descrip…¹
#> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 "SDG 4 Education - Global and Thematic Indic… https:/… Septembre 2024
#> 2 "Other Policy Relevant Indicators (OPRI)" https:/… September 2024
#> 3 " SDG 9.5 - Research and Development (R&D)" https:/… October 2024
#> 4 "Research and Development (R&D) – Other Poli… https:/… October 2024
#> 5 "SDG 11.4 Protect the Worlds Cultural and Na… https:/… October 2024
#> 6 "Demographic and Socio-economic Indicators" https:/… September 2024
#> 7 "Education Non Core Archive February 2020" https:/… <NA>
#> 8 "Research and Development (R&D) Archive Marc… https:/… <NA>
#> 9 "Innovation Archive April 2017" https:/… <NA>
#> 10 "Cultural employment Archive June 2019" https:/… <NA>
#> 11 "Cultural trade Archive June 2021" https:/… <NA>
#> # ℹ abbreviated name: ¹​last_updated_descriptionEach bulk files consists of multiple CSV files and the
uisapi package currently does not provide automatic
importers for these files. Rather, you can use base utils to download a
specific file, unzip it, and read its files. For instance:
download.file(
"https://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/bdds/092024/SDG.zip",
destfile = "SDG.zip"
)
unzip("SDG.zip")
read.csv("SDG_COUNTRY.csv")