Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Saturday, March 31, 2007

January JCMC devoted to e-science

The January issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is devoted to e-Science.  (Thanks to TL Infobits.)  All the articles may interest OAN readers, but these two are most relevant to OA:

  • Dan L. Burk, Intellectual Property in the Context of e-Science.  Abstract:   "E-science promises to allow globally-distributed collaboration and access to scientific research via computer networks, but e-science development is already encountering difficulty over the intellectual property rights associated with data and networked collaborative activity. The proprietary nature of intellectual property is generally problematic in the practice of science, but such difficulties are likely to be exacerbated in the context of e-science collaboration where the development and use of intellectual resources will likely be distributed among many researchers in a variety of physical locations, often spanning national boundaries. While a potential solution to such problems may reside in the mechanism of "open source" licenses, the organizational structure of scientific research may not map cleanly onto the open source model. Consequently, a firm understanding of not only the technical structure but of the social and communicative structure of e-science will be necessary in order to adapt licensing solutions to the practice of e-science."
  • Nathan Bos and six co-authors, From Shared Databases to Communities of Practice: A Taxonomy of Collaboratories.  Abstract:   "Promoting affiliation between scientists is relatively easy, but creating larger organizational structures is much more difficult, due to traditions of scientific independence, difficulties of sharing implicit knowledge, and formal organizational barriers. The Science of Collaboratories (SOC) project conducted a broad five-year review to take stock of the diverse ecosystem of projects that fit our definition of a collaboratory and to distill lessons learned in the process. This article describes one of the main products of that review, a seven-category taxonomy of collaboratory types. The types are: Distributed Research Centers, Shared Instruments, Community Data Systems, Open Community Contribution Systems, Virtual Communities of Practice, Virtual Learning Communities, and Community Infrastructure Projects. Each of the types is defined and illustrated with one example, and key technical and organizational issues are identified."