Understanding Knowledge As a Commons :

From Theory to Practice

Edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom

Copyright © 2005. MIT Press. All rights reserved.

UOKM

Kuang Jen Huang

2011/12/05

Overview

• Scholarly Communication: the way scholars use to create, transform, disseminate and preserve their research findings.

• Central issue: making scholarly work open access and available on the internet.

• Contributors: David Bollier, James Boyle, James C. Cox, Shubha Ghosh, Charlotte Hess, Nancy Kranich, Peter Levine, Wendy Pradt Lougee, Elinor Ostrom, Charles Schweik, Peter Suber, J. Todd Swarthout, Donald Waters

“Workshop on Scholarly Communication as a Commons"

in 2004

Outline

• What’s Commons

• IAD framework

• Open Access governance

Incentives, financial support, legal protection

• Business model

• The role of research libraries

Conceptualizing the Knowledge

Commons

Protecting the Knowledge Commons

Creating New Knowledge Commons

What’s commons?

• Commons: a resource shared by a group of people.

Natural commons

Knowledge commons

A shared collection of resources

openly accessible to the public.

Finite and depletable Nonrival

Resource from : http://www.ledcrowd.com/

Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework

• Three clusters of variables • Consider at different scales • Variables change at different scales

Open Access

• Free, online access to information without most copy right and licensing restrictions.

• Today, most Open Access archives are built around computer software. (Open Source Software)

• Online scholarly information can be accessed from anywhere but only if you have the necessary access rights.

• To transform the Open Source Software paradigm to scientific collaboration situations – Incentives

– Financial support

– Licensing (legal protection)

Incentives

• Scholars write for – Impact: disseminating their work to

the widest possible audience.

– Promotion: publishing in high-quality, refereed journals

• For scientific commons to succeed, it must be compatible with the current evaluation systems in universities and scientific research organizations.

Financial support

• for participants’ time and energy in contributing to the commons.

• for the administrative infrastructure that makes the commons available; coordinate activities.

• Different financial-support schemes in the open-source software domain: – The government-subsidy model; philanthropic funding;

corporate consortia; corporate investment; venture capital banking; donations from participants or users; hybrid/mix

Legal protection

• Worry: the circulation of work over the Internet might cause inappropriate use.

• New forms of restrictions was developed by people associated with the nonprofit organization CreativeCommons.org in 2002.

For more information http://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en

“Science Commons” project

1) promoting open access to scientific publications

2) developing standard licensing models to facilitate wider access to scientific information

3) exploring ways to increase the sharing of scientific data

For more information http://sciencecommons.org/index.php

Business model

• Traditional market: a producer creates and sells a product that consumers demand.

• Two-sided market: two different groups need the services of an intermediary in creating a new product. (E.g. credit card company)

• Both publishers and readers must be on board. Market flourishes only if the number of participants

on both sides is large and growing.

Control Zone

• Stewardship: buying books, journals and store them for readers’ use.

Systems and Services

• Developing digital environments

• Providing access to digital resources

Functional Catalyst

• Active collaborator in online-community context

The role of research libraries

Summary

• In sum, this book explored the possibilities and challenges for sharing any kind of work or content to the public as a “commons” from the perspectives of political science, economics, and law.

Related Links

• TED speech: Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html

• Openness, the knowledge commons and the critique of intellectual property http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=88

• Open access: Reshaping rules of research http://www.thestar.com/article/185609

• Government-funded research to be housed in free public database http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6836/is_1_102/ai_n28491381/

• Academic Patenting: How universities and public research organizations… http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/documents/academic_patenting.html

• Creative Commons Lisences http://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en

• Science Commons http://sciencecommons.org/index.php