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Open Access and the Public Domain in Digital Data and Information for Science Proceedings of an International Symposium (2004) / Chapter Skim
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24 A Contractually Reconstructed Research Commons for Scientific Data: International Considerations
Pages 98-102

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From page 98...
... 2003. "A Contractually Reconstructed Research Commons for Scientific Data in a Highly Protectionist Intellectual Property Environment," 66 Law and Contemporary Problems, Winter-Spring, 315-462.
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From page 99...
... In other words, it has deliberately made use of existing intellectual property rights, contracts, and technologies to construct a research commons for the flow of scientific data as a public good. The unique combination of these instruments is a key aspect of the success of our national research enterprise.
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From page 100...
... PROPOSALS FOR THE GOVERNMENT SECTOR To preserve and maintain the traditional public-domain functions of government-generated data the United States will have to adjust its existing policies and practices to take account of new information regimes and the growing pressures for privatization. At the same time government agencies will have to find ways of coping with bilateral data exchanges with other countries that exercise intellectual property rights in their own data collections.
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From page 101...
... A second, more recent model enabled by improved Internet capabilities also envisions a centralized administrative entity, but this entity governs a network of highly distributed smaller data repositories, sometimes referred to as "nodes." Together the nodes constitute a virtual archive whose relatively small central office oversees agreed technical, operational, and legal standards to which all member nodes adhere. Examples of such decentralized networks, which operate on a public-domain basis in the United States, are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Distributed Active Archive Centers under the Earth Observing System Program and the Long Term Ecological Research Network funded by the National Science Foundation.
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From page 102...
... In both these pioneering movements, agreed contractual templates have been experimentally developed to reverse or constrain the exclusionary effects of strong intellectual property rights. Although neither of these models was developed with the needs of public science in mind, both provide helpful examples of how universities, federal funding agencies, and scientific bodies might contractually reconstruct a research commons for scientific data that could withstand the legal, economic, and technological pressures on the public domain.7 7See pages 425 to 456 of Reichman and Uhlir, op.
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Key Terms

  • research commons
  • contractual templates
  • own data
  • commercial opportunities
  • public science

  • reconstructed research
  • transaction costs
  • publicly funded
  • educational purposes
  • ensure unimpeded

  • nonprofit scientific
  • technical pressures
  • nonprofit research
  • contractually reconstructed
  • sharing ethos

  • data exchanges
  • unimpeded access
  • information laws
  • surprisingly fragile
  • internet capabilities

  • react collectively
  • resulting research
  • research contract
  • interuniversity exchanges
  • commercial exploitation

  • atmospheric research
  • typically run
  • ecological research
  • impeding socially
  • permit suppliers


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