OPEN COLLABORATION PROJECT
The Open Collaboration Project seeks to map the policy barriers to the global distribution of bioresearch data. The pilot study will identify policies and practices in the UK.
The internet has expanded the ability and willingness of researchers to collaborate on a global basis. Voluntary communities have spring up to work on mutual problems. The resulting work product is frequently published online with the expressed intent that it be freely available for public use. Unfortunately, the law does not automatically cooperate with this aspiration. Employers of these collaborators may have conflicting rights in any content developed by their staff. Content that is free of restraint in one nation may be encumbered by patent or copyright protection in another. Is it even legally possible to assemble a globally coherent data set from UK, India, and China and download it for a research project in Brazil?
Making knowledge accessible is not the same as making it useful, particularly knowledge expressed in data formats. Reading data may inform a researcher, but much of the time the data is far too voluminous or discrete to digest. More often, it is necessary to copy, merge, amend and redistribute data in order to make adequate use of it in further research. Securing full permission for “full use” is a daunting process because the laws of many different nations – as well as the policies and practices of many different institutions — are involved. A recent survey of key scientists and thought leaders conducted by the Sage Commons Congress identified constraints that included privacy laws, export controls, employment commitments, ethics policies, and funding restrictions, to name a few. Nevertheless, the progress of science depends upon clearing such obstacles.
Scientific collaboration, more than most other academic disciplines, is an international effort depending as it does on universal objective truths rather than parochial viewpoints. Intellectual property law advances science by securing the benefits of revenue and attribution to the knowledge generator but also inhibits it by forcing resource-scarce research institutions to undertake time consuming and expensive rights clearance burdens. This study aims to reduce some of those burdens by identifying procedures, tools and techniques that help overcome these hurdles
In additional to informal collectives, formal organizations need guidance as they develop relationships with peer organizations from different regions. Even sophisticated universities rarely take steps to ensure that their work is permissioned for global use.Government-managed consortia and international standards bodies may also need to re-assess their practices as they move toward open sharing principles.
The results of this research program will be publicly accessible online in the form a guidelines for emerging collaboratives, employers of researchers, and policy-making bodies.
