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19. Potential Effects of a Diminishing Public Domain in Biomedical Research Data
Pages 133-138

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From page 133...
... In Session 2, my colleague Sherry Brandt-Rauf presented some of the findings of our studies of data access practices among biomedical researchers.] I envy her ability to talk about data that we actually collected, as opposed to my charge, which is to talk speculatively about what might happen if the public domain were to diminish in the biomedical area.
From page 134...
... When I refer to scientists, I am referring to researchers working in molecular biology and other benchtop biomedical fields that exhibit similar cultures. DATA ACCESS PRACTICES PUBLIC DOMAINS Having briefly characterized the strategic role of data and the wide variety of transactions that surround data and resources, it is finally time to turn to my main question: What would happen to this area of science if the public
From page 135...
... So scientists deal less with the public domain if we construe that as a legal category produced in court decisions, statutes, briefs, and formal legal negotiations than with resources that are more, and sometimes less, "available." Shifting from a legal concept of the public domain to this more pragmatic concept centered on access directs our attention not only to formal ownership, but also to the practical difficulties of obtaining data and resources. When molecular biologists refer to some data and resources as "public" they typically mean that they are readily available to any scientist.
From page 136...
... Research communities play a key role in constituting public domains in science. If you think of public domains not as an abstract legal category, but instead as material entities produced actively through social action, then research communities are central players in building them.
From page 137...
... LASL gathered previously published sequences, which at that point were published in print in scientific journals, and prepared them in machine-readable form to permit mathematical analysis. In this way, these scientists created a new kind of public domain the sequence database for biology (Cinkosky et al., 1991; Hilgartner, 1995~.
From page 138...
... 1997. "Access to data and intellectual property: scientific exchange in genome research," in National Research Council's Intellectual Property and Research Tools in Molecular Biology: Report of a Workshop.


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