Yochai Benkler, Commons-Based Strategies and the Problems of Patents, Science Magazine, August 20, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Despite the title, this article is not limited to patent issues. The general topic is "commons-based" approaches to scientific research, from well-known OA initiatives like arXiv and PLoS to less familiar ones like Folding@home and PIPRA. Excerpt: "Property, contract, and managerial commands are the basic tools of managing mainstream production. By contrast, production is 'commons-based' when no one uses exclusive rights to organize effort or capture its value, and when cooperation is achieved through social mechanisms other than price signals or managerial directions. Large-scale instances of such cooperation are 'peer production'....As distributed computing has shown, seemingly insurmountable equipment costs may sometimes be resolvable by reorganizing a process. Ultimately the problem of high-cost bottlenecks may limit the extent to which some processes can be made amenable to peer production. If small enough, however, residual costs may be covered by philanthropic and government funding. Scientists can learn from peer production how to organize their research projects to modularize research tasks and to integrate contributions from many low-intensity collaborators. This will increase their ability to pursue science that affects millions of lives, but cannot pay its way under the present system."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/19/2004 11:22:00 PM.
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.
