Key
Session on Creating Global Information Commons for Science
Open Data and New Measures of Scientific
Impact
John
Wilbanks,
Scholarly communication in the sciences generally involves three components:
data generated by experimental research, a peer-reviewed article explaining and
interpreting the data, and metadata that describes or interprets the underlying
data or the article.
Traditionally, journal publishers were predominantly responsible for gathering,
distributing and archiving this information.
The Internet and associated digital networks create a range of opportunities
and challenges for changing the nature of what information gets stored and
communicated, how and when it gets communicated, and how it is marked with
metadata to aid in its use
and reuse. Science Commons is devoted to using its legal and technical
expertise to help scientific researchers make the best use possible of these
new communication technologies.
This talk will focus on legal, technical and institutional approaches for
increasing access to, and the impact of, investments in scientific research.
In particular the talk will focus on using intellectual property, contract
regimes, and international partnerships to facilitate data sharing, with a
focus on neuroscience as a test case.
Keywords:
open access, scientific data, scientific literature, scientific communication,
research impact, common-use contracts, neuroscience