Open Access News

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, The New Science of Sharing, Business Week, March 2, 2007.  (Thanks to Glyn Moody.)  Excerpt:

Earlier this month, Swiss drugmaker Novartis did something rather unusual—and almost unheard of in the high-stakes, highly competitive world of Big Pharma. After investing millions trying to unlock the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes, the company released all of its raw data on the Internet. This means anyone (or any company) with the inclination is free to use the data—no strings attached....

So why the giveaway? "These discoveries are but a first step," says Mark Fishman, president of the Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research. "To translate this study's provocative identification of diabetes-related genes into the invention of new medicines will require a global effort."

In other words, the research conducted by Novartis and its university partners at MIT and Lund University in Sweden merely sets the stage for the more complex and costly drug identification and development process. According to researchers, there are far more leads than any one lab could possibly follow up alone. So by placing its data in the public domain, Novartis hopes to leverage the talents and insights of a global research community to dramatically scale and speed up its early-stage R&D activities....

The Novartis collaboration is just one example of a deep transformation in science and invention. Just as the Enlightenment ushered in a new organizational model of knowledge creation, the same technological and demographic forces that are turning the Web into a massive collaborative work space are helping to transform the realm of science into an increasingly open and collaborative endeavor. Yes, the Web was, in fact, invented as a way for scientists to share information. But advances in storage, bandwidth, software, and computing power are pushing collaboration to the next level. Call it Science 2.0....

Indeed, in just about every discipline, plummeting computing and collaboration costs are encouraging the formation of large-scale research networks. A decade ago, disciplines such as astronomy were still driven by small groups of scientists keeping observational data proprietary and publishing individual results. With projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, astronomy is now organized around massive data sets that are shared and coded by the community.

The free and open exchange of information and ideas will provide astronomers with an unprecedented map of the universe in a fraction of the time it would have taken using conventional methods.

As large-scale scientific collaborations become the norm, scientists will rely increasingly on distributed methods of collecting data, verifying discoveries, and testing hypotheses not only to speed things up but to improve the veracity of scientific knowledge itself. For example, rapid, iterative, and open-access publishing will engage a much greater proportion of the scientific community in the peer-review process....

There will always be aspects of scientific inquiry that are painstakingly slow and methodical. But scientific institutions can take steps to encourage mass collaboration. Discarding the outmoded, manual data-permission policies that currently thwart the ability to share data would enable scientific Web services to weave together information from all of the world's databases. Teams of scientists that invest heavily in collecting data, and understandably feel justified in retaining privileged access to it, could apply Creative Commons licenses that stipulate rights and credits for the reuse of data, while allowing uninterrupted access by networked computers.

Leading scientific observers already expect more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years of inquiry combined. As the pace of science quickens, there will be less value in stashing new scientific ideas, methods, and results in subscription-only journals and databases, and more value in wide-open collaborative-knowledge platforms that are refreshed with each new discovery. These changes will enhance the ability of scientists to find, retrieve, sort, evaluate, and filter the wealth of human knowledge, and, of course, to continue to enlarge and improve it. Meanwhile, faster feedback cycles from public knowledge to private enterprise, enabled by more nimble industry-university networks, will allow new knowledge to flow more quickly into practical uses and enterprises....

In order to stay ahead, Intel needs to expand into new offerings and find ways to add value to chips, which are increasingly low-cost commodities. The problem for companies like Intel is that the kind of exploratory research required to renew product roadmaps and identify disruptive innovations is the most costly and risky. So like a growing number of businesses in fast-moving, tech-intensive industries, Intel is sharing these costs and risks through an open and collaborative model of industry-university partnerships....

And rather than wrangle over who gets to control and exploit the fruits of joint research efforts, Intel and its academic partners sign Intel's open collaborative research agreement, which grants nonexclusive rights to all parties....

The bottom line is that sharing knowledge and data in scientific communities is not just good playground etiquette, it's about growth, innovation, and profit. By sharing basic scientific data and collaborating across institutional boundaries, companies like Novartis and Intel are challenging a deeply held belief that early stage R&D activities are best pursued within the confines of secretive laboratories. As a result, both were able to cut costs, accelerate innovation, create more wealth for shareholders, and ultimately help society reap the benefits of scientific research more quickly....

What's more, this logic of sharing doesn't apply only to science. "Just as it's true that a rising tide lifts all boats," says Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems (SUNW), "we genuinely believe that radical sharing is a win-win for everyone. Expanding markets create new opportunities." Under the right conditions, the same could be said of most industries, from automobiles to other consumer products....