…The case for sharing methods is, at least on the surface, easier to make than sharing data. A community can really benefit from having all those tips and tricks available. You put yours up and I’ll put mine up means everyone benefits. But if there is something that gives you a critical competitive advantage then how easy is that going to be to give up? An old example is the ‘liquid gold’ transformation buffer developed by Doug Hanahan (read the story in Sambrook and Russell, third edition, p1.105 or online here - I think; its not open access). Hanahan ‘freely and generously distributed the buffer to anyone whose experiments needed high efficiencies…’ (Sambrook and Russell) but he was apparently less keen to make the recipe available. And when it was published (Hanahan, 1983) many labs couldn’t achieve the same efficiencies, again because of details like a critical requirement for absolutely clean glassware (how clean is clean?). How many papers these days even include or reference the protocol used for transformation of E. coli? Yet this could, and did, give a real competitive advantage to particular labs in the early 1980s.
So, if we are to make a case for making methodology open we need to tackle this. I think it is clear that making this knowledge available is good for the science community. But it could be a definite negative for specific groups and people. The challenge lies in making sure that altruistic behaviour that benefits the community is rewarded. And this won’t happen unless metrics of success and community stature are widened to include more than just publications.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/18/2007 01:51:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
