Special Access: A research paper by Toby Mendel, director of the Centre for Law and Democracy, on whether researchers should be granted special access to information privileges.
Twitter: The first Twitter transparency report is issued, documenting government requests for user information and government requests received to withhold content, plush takedown notices received from copyright holders. The report also says whether or not Twitter acted on these requests.
Case Studies: Oxfam publishes a new series of case studies, describing its work on local governance and community action. There are case studies from Nepal (women’s rights), Malawi (access to medicines), Kenya (tracking public spending), Viet Nam (community participation) and Tanzania (the Chukua Hatua project), and an overview paper by Jo Rowlands. One line in the Tanzania staudy says, “Ignorance is a killing machine.” This was written about in a World Bank blog by Duncan Green.
Open Data Census: The Open Knowledge Foundation launches an Open Data Census “seeking info on the `open’ status of datasets of different types around the world.
Content Mining: Principles to guide mining of scholarly research proposed in a blog post by Peter Murray-Rust.
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