The World Health Organization global strategy on public health, innovation and intellectual property calls for the exploration of alternative mechanisms to incentivise research and development, including the use of prize funds. A diverse group of nongovernmental agencies, government and pharmaceutical industry representatives recently looked at prize funds in detail, to determine different possible approaches and where they might best be applied to medical innovations. ...
[One] idea is to use open licensing, said Judit Rius Sanjuan of [Knowledge Ecology International]. A prize fund might be divided such that ninety percent goes to the group that developed the medical product, and ten percent goes to those that shared data that helped in the development of a medical product. This “open source dividend” might encourage companies to share work that might otherwise have gone unused. ...
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.
