On June 11, Research on Theoretical Innovation and Practical Path from Government Information Disclosure to Data Openness in China, the 2022 Major Project of the National Social Science Fund of China, was opened. Ruhua Huang, Deputy Director of Wuhan University Library and Professor at our School, was the chief expert of the project.

People attended the project opening meeting were as followings:

Lixin Xia, Professor and CPC Secretary of Central China Normal University,

Huanwen Cheng, Professor and Dean of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Development, Sun Yat-sen University,

Guoqing Huo, Professor at the School of Public Policy and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,

Yuefen Wang, Professor and Dean of the Institute for Big Data Science, Tianjin Normal University,

Feicheng Ma, Senior Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Wuhan University, head of the assessment team of Information Resources Management of the National Social Science Fund of China,

Chuanfu Chen, Senior Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Wuhan University,

Gang Li, Director of the Center for Studies of Information Resources, Wuhan University,

Ping Wu, Professor at our School,

Dan Wu, Professor at our School,

Congjing Ran, Professor at our School,

Tingting Jiang, Professor at our School.

Jiang Wu, Professor and Associate Dean of our School, presided over the opening ceremony.

Qing Fang, Professor and Dean of the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, Wuhan University, and Wei Lu, Dean of our School, made opening speeches.

Ruhua Huang made an overall report of the project. She introduced the research conception of the project from seven aspects: research origin, key problems to be solved, overall research framework and research content, research emphasis and difficulty, research innovation, research objectives and expected results.

Five sub-project heads made a brief report on the main problems to be solved, main research contents and research team. The five heads are:

Longwen Zhao, Professor at the Department of Electronic Business, South China University of Technology,

Xinxin Zhang, Professor at the College of Communication and Art Design, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology,

Wenhong Zhou, Associate Professor at the School of Information Resource Management, Renmin University of China,

Suhua Zhang, Professor at the School of Law, Wuhan University,

Lihong Zhou, Professor at our School.

They expressed that the research would be carried out according to the thoughts of strategic demand and current situation investigation, theoretical innovation, system improvement, service system reconstruction and independent knowledge system construction.

After listening to the report, the experts put forward suggestions and opinions from the aspects of research focus, research innovation, research path and achievement transformation. They believed that the project has built an interdisciplinary research team according to the strategic needs of building Digital China, the project’s research content is rich, the logical relationship among sub-projects is clear, and the expected results are worth looking forward to, which has important theoretical value and practical significance. It is necessary to further clarify and focus on the core issues, key issues and important issues to be solved by the project, and focus on the underlying and fundamental system innovation; It is necessary to pay attention to field investigation and the actual needs of government’s data management institutions and their users; It is necessary to do the national project from the level of national governance, and the five sub-projects support the output of symbolic and representative academic achievements, pay attention to theoretical innovation and transformation of academic achievements, and help China improve its international academic discourse power.

Feicheng Ma presided over the opening meeting and made a conclusion. He affirmed the value of project topic selection fully, and pointed out that the project team should focus on research priorities, dig deep into research innovation, pay equal attention to academic theory and practicality, and form a number of policy-oriented and national-level consulting reports.