With all sorts of data going open, could The Open Source Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse have been far behind?

It's the Zeitgeist, stupid, or so the site tells us.

The results of an official audit by The National Audit Office suggest that the UK is leading the way in open government data.

Scientific results should be made freely available to the public within six months of first publication, according to Sir Mark Walport, the director of the Wellcome Trust.

The US National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy has long been controversial. The policy requires NIH grant-holders to deposit manuscripts in PubMed Central no later than a year after the version of record is published.

Freebase is an open Creative Commons licensed graph database. It is not a database of graphs, but rather, 'graph' refers to the structure of the database. Instead of using tables and keys as in traditional databases, Freebase defines its data structure as a set of nodes and links between nodes.

New Zealand WWI Linked Open Data uses data sourced from NZ's Nominal Embarkation Rolls - a series of documents listing the details of those departing for service overseas - to help answer questions about the social impact of WWI on New Zealand society.

Governments worldwide are starting to crack open their data vaults and let users rummage inside.

It was not that long ago that the World Bank opened up its data banks to users. Since that momentous day, the Bank has been swamped by users, all keen to use the data - so much so that traffic to the data site now dwarfs traffic to the Bank's home page, according to Aleem Walji, practice manager of World Bank Institute's innovation team.