Open data promises various benefits, including stimulating innovation, improving transparency and public decision-making, and enhancing the reproducibility of scientific research. Nevertheless, numerous studies have highlighted myriad challenges related to preparing, disseminating, processing, and reusing open data, with newer studies revealing similar issues to those identified a decade prior. Several researchers have proposed the open data ecosystem (ODE) as a lens for studying and devising interventions to address these issues. Since actors in the ecosystem are individually and collectively impacted by the sustainability of the ecosystem, all have a role in tackling the challenges in the ODE. This paper asks what the contributions of open data intermediaries may be in addressing these challenges. Open data intermediaries are third-party actors providing specialized resources and capabilities to (i) enhance the supply, flow, and/or use of open data and/or (ii) strengthen the relationships among various open data stakeholders. They are critical in ensuring the flow of resources within the ODE. Through semi-structured interviews and a validation exercise in the European Union context, this study explores the potential contribution of open data intermediaries and the specific ODE challenges they may address. This study identified 20 potential contributions, addressing 27 challenges. The findings of this study pave the way for further inquiry into the internal incentives (viable business models) and external incentives (policies and regulations) to direct the contributions of open data intermediaries toward addressing challenges in the ODE.

The Xinjiang Class (Xinjiang neidi ban, or Xinjiangban) has far-reaching implications for Beijing's governance of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Existing literature has focused primarily on the Uyghur–Han dichotomy, with limited attention being paid to the actual multi-ethnic interactions that constitute the situated dynamics of policy implementation. Utilizing the notions of the space of prescription and the space of negotiation to develop an analytical framework, this paper argues that social relations in the Xinjiangban are ongoing constructions borne by everyday experiences of domination and negotiation, and that space is constitutive of this situated dynamic. Based on nearly four years of research at a Xinjiangban, we make a case for the fluidity and incoherence of the implementation of the Xinjiangban policy. Those who implement it at the school level produce a space of prescription that deploys specific spatial–temporal arrangements to manage expressions of ethnic identity. Driven by the need to achieve upward mobility, minority students are open-minded about the Han- and patriotism-centred education. However, they use innovative and improvised tactics to create spaces of negotiation to re-assert their ethnicities. In the Xinjiangban, minority students do comply with spaces of prescription, but they simultaneously keep their ethnic and religious practices alive.