Institute For The Future

Science Commons promotes open innovation at eTech conference

I hate live blogging.  But I am at the ETech conference in San Jose and am determined to give it a go. . . .

John Wilbanks from Science Commons is giving an interesting presentation about sharing data in the life sciences, particularly in the areas of genomics and neuroscience.

The movement toward open innovation in the sciences is filled with challenges, from legal to cultural.  As Wilbanks points out, "Copyright principles do not work well with data." And sharing technology is antithetical to the patent system.  He notes that some scientific areas--specifically, physics--are already more open to being open, to sharing information, while the social systems of other sciences are far more closed.  A cultural shift among scientists could benefit researchers around the world by providing greater access to data sets.

Wilbanks just announced the launch of a new Science Commons project for sharing personal genome data. ProteomeCommons.org, currently in beta, will provide public access to free, open-source proteomics tools and data.  (Quick, what the heck is proteomics?  Oh yeah, the study of proteins' structures and functions.  Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Wilbanks started his presentation with Merck's recent announcement about hosting an open access database of disease biology.  Knowing nothing about this, I've conducted a quick Google search and have learned that the pharmaceutical giant "has pledged to donate a remarkable resource to the commons - a vast database of highly consistent data about the biology of disease, as well as software tools and other resources to use it."  (This comes from Wilbanks' own blog post at Common Knowledge.)

Wilbanks encourages us to consider that, "Public domain should be thought of as an affirmatively good thing." Science Commons has been at the forefront of the open access movement for scientific papers.  The NIH has mandated that all U.S. government-funded peer-reviewed journal articles be openly available; the influential private research organization Howard Hughes Medical Institute also implemented a similar public access policy.

Okay, I have tried to write this post and take notes all at the

same time.  I realize that the above is a bit of a jumbled mess.  It

turns out that live tweeting is a bit easier (see twitter/vdistler, if you are interested in what I have managed to pull off during this same session).  Thanks for your patience.  I will now revert back to my long, tortured blog-writing efforts. I think the results are generally more coherent, and perhaps more interesting.