A new survey shows scientists consider the proliferation of intellectual property protection to have a strongly negative effect on research....
Here we report scientists' assessments regarding the overall effects of IP protection, as revealed in a survey of academic agricultural biologists. Scientists believe that, contrary to the current consensus, proliferation of IP protection [particularly, patents and material transfer agreements or MTAs] has a strongly negative effect on research in their disciplines....
[T]he major impediment to accessing research tools is not patents per se, but patenting as an institutional imperative in the post-Bayh-Dole era....
These findings challenge the inferences of social scientists that there are no real problems with policies encouraging increased patenting of research tools. They also help explain why agricultural biologists have become leaders in the exploration of open source biology (BiOS, Biological Innovation for Open Society) and in institutional collaborations to facilitate access to crucial enabling technologies (PIPRA, Public Intellectual Property Rights for Agriculture). They support the widespread adoption of the Uniform Biological Material Transfer Agreement (UBMTA) for exchanges among scientists, long advocated by the National Institutes of Health....
At first glance, our sample's views regarding IP protection might appear to be at odds with previous surveys attributing the research tool access problem to scientists' reluctance to share materials they control, motivated by increasing competitive pressures, cost of sharing or commercial concerns. However, none of those surveys asked scientists for their own assessment of the effects of IP protection on research in their fields. Our general conclusions are consistent with the fact that each of the AAAS' Project on Science and Intellectual Property in the Public Interest four-country studies reports (without comment) that more than half of respondents believe that IP rights impair the free and open exchange of materials and/or research results....
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.
