Key Session on Creating Global Information Commons for Science
Creating Global Information Commons for Science
Paul F. Uhlir, the National Academies, USA, puhlir@nas.edu
The digital revolution is
creating unprecedented opportunities for scientific discovery and innovation.
New paradigms of knowledge creation and dissemination are emerging in public
research based on distributed, volunteer, and open collaboration using global
digital networks and facilitated by common-sue licenses. The means and modes of
production in all spheres of human endeavor are being re-engineered from the
mechanistic Industrial Age approaches to post-industrial, Information Age
processes. The new approaches are making the production and exploitation of
scientific information faster, cheaper, and better. However, many of the
scientific collaboration and information dissemination models are still based
on the anachronistic print paradigm, which fails to take advantage of the
revolutionary capabilities presented by the new cyber-infrastructure.
To help promote more
effective knowledge creation and dissemination of data and information from
public research, CODATA and the
1. Improve understanding and increase awareness of the societal and
economic benefits of easy access to and use of scientific data and information, particularly those resulting from publicly
funded research activities;
2. Identify and promote the broad
adoption of successful institutional and legal models for providing open
availability on a sustainable basis and facilitating reuse of scientific data
and information;
3. Encourage and help to
coordinate the efforts of the many stakeholders in the world’s diverse
scientific community who are engaged in devising and implementing effective
approaches to attaining these objectives, with particular attention to the
circumstances of the developing as well as the
developed countries.
4. Promote all of the objectives
of the Initiative through the development of an online “open access knowledge environment”.
Other international and national organizations representing a broad
range of scientific and informatics stakeholders will collaborate with the
Initiative on an affiliated basis.
This presentation will review
the policies behind recent developments in the open production and
dissemination of scientific information from public research and will discuss the
goals of the Global Information Commons for Science Initiative in greater
detail, with a view to bringing in new affiliated organizations from the Asian
region.
Keywords: common-use licensing, intellectual property
rights, international cooperation, digital networks, scientific data,
scientific information, public research