In today's New York Times, Ed Regis reviews John Sulston and Georgina Ferry's new book, The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome (The Joseph Henry Press, 2003). A big part of the "ethics" in the book's subtitle is the ethics of sharing scientific knowledge freely. Regis quoting Sulston: "Open access and early release [of data] mean that anyone in the worldwide biological community can use those data and turn them into biological understanding and ultimately into new inventions that can be patented. But the sequence itself in its raw form when publicly released becomes unpatentable.''
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/16/2003 11:47:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
