Open Access News

[p. 26:] Without the promotion of a new ethics of knowledge based on sharing and cooperation, the most advanced countries’ tendency to capitalize on their advance might lead to depriving the poorest nations of such cognitive assets as new medical and agronomical knowledge, and to creating an environment that impedes the growth of knowledge. It will therefore be necessary to find a balance between protecting intellectual property and promoting the public domain of knowledge: universal access to knowledge must remain the pillar that supports the transition to knowledge societies....[p. 116:] [C]ost-free access is in no way equivalent to costfree production of the knowledge in question....While researchers are bent on access and publishers on control, everyone has an interest in making the production of scientific publications both abundant and diversified....[pp. 169-70:] UNESCO has undertaken to “promote free and universal access to public domain information for the purposes of education, science and culture” and adopted to that end, in 2003, the Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace....Knowledge itself, as an inexhaustible commons available to all human beings, is, if not a global public good(cf. Box 10.5), at least a “common public good”. For not only can knowledge not be regarded as a marketable good like others, but also knowledge only has value if it is shared by all....[p. 172:] If we accept that scientific knowledge is a “public good”, it follows that scientific data and information should be made as widely available and affordable as possible, since the benefits for society will be a function of the number of people able to share them....Scientists are worried that the excessive privatization and commercialization of scientific data and information is undermining the traditional sharing ethos of science by shrinking the public domain and threatening open access to global public goods, with a consequential loss of opportunity at both the national and international levels. What would the consequences have been for global health research if the human genome project had been commercialized, for example? Initiated by the United States Government in the late 1980s, the project was threatened by a corporate rival in 1998. At that point, the Wellcome Trust, a United Kingdom charity, teamed up with the United States Government, increasing massively its investment in the project so that its own Sanger Institute could decode one-third of the 3 billion “letters” that make up “the code of life”. Today, the completed sequences are freely available to the world’s scientific community....Whereas there has been a strong focus on new commercial opportunities using digitalized information and on the intellectual property rights issue, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the importance of maintaining open access to the source of upstream scientific data and of information produced in the public domain for the benefit of all downstream users....How do you preserve and promote access to public science without unduly restricting commercial opportunities and the legitimate rights of authors?...[p. 173:] ICSU and CODATA have established a joint ad hoc Group on Data and Information. This Group drafted a core set of principles in June 2000 to support full and open access to data needed for scientific research and education (see Box 10.6)....Like private publishers, professional societies are searching for an optimum balance between open access and financial viability. Some professional societies and other groups have embraced the open access model, although the majority still tends towards a more protective approach....[p. 174:] ICSU’s core principles in support of full and open access to data:...Scientific advances rely on full and open access to data. Both science and the public are well served by a system of scholarly research and communication with minimal constraints on the availability of data for further analysis. The tradition of full and open access to data has led to breakthroughs in scientific understanding, as well as to later economic and public policy benefits. The idea that an individual or organization can control access to or claim ownership of the facts of nature is foreign to science....Legislators should take into account the impact that intellectual property laws may have on research and education. The balance achieved in the current copyright laws, while imperfect, has allowed science to flourish. It has also supported a successful publishing industry. Any new legislation should strike a balance while continuing to ensure full and open access to data needed for scientific research and education....[pp. 175-176:] Innovative models for low-cost access to online scientific information and data:...[on PERI, HINARI, eJDS, DATAD, Ptolemy Project, OAI, AGORA, and UNESCO's Virtual Laboratory CD-ROM Toolkit, PLoS, and JPGM].