This news item from Research Fortnight and accompanying decision note from the Information Commissioner's Office may be of interest to list members.
Information Commissioner forces UEA to release data
Elizabeth Gibney
The Information Commissioner's Office has ordered the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit to disclose its CRUTEM dataset to Oxford academic, Jonathan Jones.
Jones, a physicist at the university, used the Freedom of Information Act to request access to the CRU archive of world temperature data, recorded jointly with the Met Office.
The centre became embroiled a controversy known as "Climategate" in 2009, following the leaking of emails sent by the centre's academics in November of that year.
In the ruling, made on 23 June and released on 28 June, the commissioner Christopher Graham, gave the university one month to deliver the data.
The UEA turned down Jones' original request in 2009, arguing that exemptions applied because some of the data may have value as intellectual property and others were already in the public domain.
ICO decision notice
http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/decisionnotices/2011/fer_0280033.ashx
Joy Davidson
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