Anna Salleh, Push to free up biotech tools for all, ABC News in Science, December 1, 2003. On Australian geneticist Richard Jefferson and his new Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) project --which has no web site yet. BIOS will provide open access to the tools of biotechnology. Excerpt: "Jefferson said the tools of innovation were being withheld from the public and from innovators themselves, stifling competition, fair play and creativity. 'For example, access to the fundamental tool used to transfer a gene into a plant, Agrobacterium transformation, is controlled by a handful of large companies,' he said. Jefferson called for a 'democratisation of innovation' based on 'open source genetics'. Central to this concept was a distinction between the tools of innovation and the products of innovation. Tools of genetics and modern biology should be made freely available just as computer programming tools were shared in the open source software movement, he said." (PS: Also see the Slashdot discussion.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/01/2003 09:13:00 AM.
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.
