Some Observations on the Practice of Open Data as Opposed to Its Promise

[Use the link above to access the full text of the article published in the Journal of Community Informatics: a global e-journal. Community Informatics is an open access journal published using Open Journal Systems] The abstract reads as follows: “This note is a contribution to the continuing debates and analyses about what can and should be done to make public data open. In this note, I share some observations about current practices surrounding public data. In general, these observations lead to the insight that absolutely open public data is and will continue to be rare. Instead, various types of data are apt to be more or less open, and the reasons for the degree of openness may vary from one situation to another, that is by type of data, by country, by type of institution, etc.”