Blog archive for the ‘weblog’ Category

A new opinion piece in Nature on post-publication sharing of tools explicitly recommends open sharing and the use of CC0 to put data in the public domain. The special issue of Nature focuses on data sharing and is now online and accessible free of charge.

The piece “Post-publication sharing of data and tools” comes out of this year’s CASIMIR conference in Rome, and discusses the sharing of biological materials, specifically but not limited to mice and embryonic stem cells.

As you may recall, we initially wrote about this meeting back in June, following the publication of a similar opinion piece calling for better and more efficient sharing practices for physical materials. That article also stemmed from this meeting in Rome.

This opinion piece takes those ideas one step further in the discussion to a formal recommendation for open sharing under the least restrictive terms possible.

“[T]he Rome meeting strongly encouraged sharing behaviours that promote a ‘research commons’. The heart of a research commons is one in which academic research is not impeded by restrictions on use and access to data and materials, in line with the principles of the Creative Commons.”

The piece is chock-full of stellar recommendations that Science Commons supports, from better and more explicit resource sharing policies at journals and funding bodies, to the use of standard MTAs, to making data open and putting it in the public domain using CC0, our public domain waiver.

“Although it is usual practice for major public databases to make data freely available to access and use, any restrictions on use should be strongly resisted and we endorse explicit encouragement of open sharing, for example under the newly available CC0 public domain waiver of Creative Commons.”

We highly encourage a deeper read of the article for more tips on how to share resources more efficiently, as well as giving this article a read for more on pre-publication data sharing.

A recent feature in SEED Magazine asks the question: How can intellectual property – and more specifically the current patent system – spread green technology? The article, “Who Owns Green Tech?” features replies from five leading thinkers on the matter. Our own John Wilbanks was one of those panelists.

In his response, Wilbanks, VP of Science at Creative Commons, challenges the public to not view this conversation of innovation as a black and white situation, but to make room for new forms of innovation in the discussion (ie., user-driven innovation, open innovation). He also encourages conversations on how patents get licensed and used, and how standards-based approaches may allow for more open innovation.

“We can find a way to balance the incentives of corporate innovators while making sure the innovators in the developing world have the means to solve their own problems. We’ve seen similar solutions take root in cultural commerce with extraordinary results, from the existence of Wikipedia to Nine Inch Nails making millions of dollars on songs they also gave away on the internet for free,” Wilbanks said. “We can do this for patents, and we can do this for sustainability technology. But it can’t be done if the rhetoric around the conversation is consistently fueled by maximalism and confrontation.”

This idea is at the core of the GreenXchange project, a venture by Creative Commons, Nike and Best Buy to create a marketplace for invention. For more information about the project, visit the GreenXchange project page.

Commoners and digerati alike will come together tonight at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco for a vibrant discussion on the intersection of science and the Web. The event, “Making the Web Work for Science”, will be moderated by Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, joined by panelists Stephen Friend (Sage), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), and our own John Wilbanks (Science Commons).

The night will be dedicated to the idea of bringing Web efficiencies to scientific research – a core theme seen in our work and thinking here at Science Commons. We now have the tools and understanding to bring together open research and data on a global scale, embedded with the freedoms necessary to be able to fully utilize it. Come help us further discuss this concept with some of the top names in the Bay area tech community as well as open science advocates.

The event (currently sold out, but stay tuned) kicks off at 6 p.m. with a networking reception; the main event beginning at 6:30. A private reception will follow. Tickets are $8 for Commonwealth Club members, $15 for non-members, and $7 for students with valid ID.

Update: The video of the event is now online.

As of July 1, WisconsinView, an effort to make available a variety of types of imagery for the state of Wisconsin, will make their data available in the public domain via CC0. This news was brought to us by Puneet Kishor, a Science Commons fellow.

From the press release:

“Since 2004, WisconsinView  has made aerial photography and satellite imagery of Wisconsin available to the public for free over the web. As part of the AmericaView consortium, WisconsinView supports access and use of these imagery collections through education, workforce development, and research. Starting June 30, 2009, WisconsinView is making available all of its more than 6 Terabytes of imagery data under the new CC0 Protocol provided by Creative Commons. The CC0 (pronounced CC-Zero) Protocol waives any rights in a dataset, ensuring that all of the dataset is available to anyone without encumbrance of any kind. More information on CC0 is available at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0, and the reasoning behind the protocol is described here. Further questions about WisconsinView may be directed to Dr. Sam Batzli, Director, WisconsinView at sabatzli@wisc.edu or Puneet Kishor, Science Commons Fellow (Geospatial Data) at punkish@creativecommons.org.”

We applaud Batzli and Kishor for their ongoing work in making information available to the public and dedicating such a rich resource to the public domain.

A new editorial on the sharing of biological materials, specifically lab mice, is now available in Nature. The editorial “The sharing principle” addresses the conclusion of a recent workshop in Rome hosted by CASIMIR – a EU project working to “coordinate and sustain mouse resources internationally.”

The May meeting focused on sharing scientific knowledge – in this case mouse lines and resources, a tacit form of knowledge critical to the scientific research cycle. Our legal counsel, Thinh Nguyen joined the event, presenting our position on data sharing for genetic mouse material and our Materials Transfer work. The event brought together a wide array of participants, from various continents and organizations (funding agencies, academics, publishers, mouse repositories, etc.)

Their conclusion – the sharing problem needs to be addressed immediately if we are to make use of the genomic output and data, increasing exponentially as efforts become more coordinated, technology advances, and the process becomes cheaper and more efficient.

This should start with the journals and funding agencies, the author posits, by putting in place stricter policies requiring authors as a condition of publication / funding to make mice available in a public repository, or at the very least, freely available to other labs.

The facilities, coordination and technology all exist to make this happen. Our Materials Transfer work plays a part in this, allowing for those materials to be tagged, discovered and seamlessly transfered using standard, modular contracts that help clear up some of the clutter in the technology transfer system. All with the same goal in mind – to further lower the barrier and transaction cost to transferring scientific materials. All it takes are users willing to share.

For more information about our Materials Transfer work, visit its project page, where you can read the background on this, access the MTA chooser, and view the latest video.

The latest talk from Science Commons John Wilbanks on “Knowledge Interoperability” is now online, made available on “Beyond the Book”, an educational program out of the Copyright Clearance Center. The presentation was given at the annual Council of Science Editors Annual Meeting, held in Pittsburgh from May 1-5.

In Wilbanks’ talk he details the need for an open approach when it comes to knowledge sharing in the digital world, necessary to really see network effects on available information and explosions of innovation. He argues that the ability to create and distribute is now ubiquitous, and that the digital commons presents a different opportunity for sharing, if allowed. Our work at Creative Commons aims to facilitate that sharing ecosystem,  better leverage the power of the network, and enable sharing that’s legally sound, easy and scalable.

EMBL – the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, has made part of their SIDER Side Effect Resource available to the public free of restriction via CC0, placing it in the public domain.

The database, SIDER, contains information on marketed medicines and their recorded adverse side effects and drug reactions. Included in this dataset is information on the frequency of these drug reactions, other drug and side effect classifications as well as links to other relevant resources. To date, 888 drugs are listed in the database, a tremendous resource for research and drug discovery.

The mapping of labels and euphoria-related side effects are now public domain, with some other side effect information available for download under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.

Have you made your information available using CC0? We’d love to hear about it. Drop us a note.

For more information about our data policy and reasoning, see our Database Protocol or “Freedom to Research” available for download over at our Reading Room.

Worldchanging.com has a new piece up on the GreenXchange, a project of Nike and Creative Commons, housed at Science Commons. The article, “Green Xchange:  Creating a Meta-Map of Sustainability” details the underlying concepts for the project, the obstacles and includes a look into the future. The project, announced at last January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, pairs together the Creative Commons licensing structure (metadata, human readable aspect, legalese) with the right technology to allow companies to share their patents related to sustainability. The goal – to bring the efficiencies of open collaboration and innovation to the problems of sustainability.

As Agnes Mazur put it,

“While competitors in the same market may not be keen to share research done on improving product performance, companies in vastly different fields may benefit from the very same research without posing a threat. If a company like Nike, for example, has performed extensive research on maximizing the efficiency of air pressure in sneaker design, a company that manufactures truck tires may apply the patent in a way that saves materials and money, creates a more eco-friendly product, and does not harm Nike’s sales. But in a case like this, Nike may choose to draft the terms of the patent’s use to exclude other apparel companies.

Competitive companies may find it useful to collaborate on parallel research aimed at a common goal, such as reducing their environmental impact. For example, several companies in the apparel industry may be conducting their own research on creating a more eco-friendly shoebox. By sharing this type of research, companies can cut unnecessary costs and achieve results more quickly.”

The collaboration, as Mazur says, is still in its infancy, and seeking founding partners, people to contribute and those that are interested in the concept. For more information about the project, visit the GreenXchange Web site at sciencecommons.org.

The radio program “A World of Possibilities” has a fantastic new piece up on “Open Source science” and Health Commons. The podcast explores the Health Commons approach of creating a more open system for the exchange of medical information that cuts across sectors, medical professionals, cultural boundaries, etc to leverage the power of the network and accelerate the pace of drug discovery. The segment also takes a look at the personal reasons behind this collaboration and the benefits of an “Open Source” approach to sharing biomedical knowledge. Featured in this segment are representatives from two of Health Commons partners: Marty Tenenbaum, the chairman and chief scientist for CollabRx; and Gavin Yamey and Peter Jerram from the Public Library of Science.

We encourage you to give it a listen and let us know your thoughts. For more information about the Health Commons project, visit its Web site (also hosted on the SC site here).

The folks over at Talis recently announced a new free data-hosting service for open data, the “Talis Connected Commons”.

The service provides free data hosting up to 50 million RDF triples and 10Gb of content for “qualifying” data sets, as specified by their Web site.  To qualify for entry, the data and content must be made available to the public domain either under CC0 – a waiver we recently released that allows for one to waive all rights over their work, or the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License.

I further bore into the details regarding hosting public domain data, inquiring whether or not data naturally in the public domain and not marked by CC0 or the PDDL would be allowed in the system. Talis’ Leigh Dodds, after a few email exchanges, expressed their desire to have the data clearly marked via CC0 or PDDL, but assured me that data already in the commons — for example, the human genome — would not be excluded.

Confusion clarified.

We commend Talis for using CC0 as a means to clearly mark and identify public domain data, and look forward to see what fruit this tree will bring for the open data / linked data communities.

For more information, visit their Web site and FAQ.