Biotechnology - Genomic and Proteomics/Commons based cases in BGP

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Report April 2009

Research questions:

  1. Commons based cases (the cases that we know will appear in the right part of the quadrants)
    • Identify cases
    • Correlate them with their main outputs (Data. Narratives. Tools)
    • How and in what extent they are “experimenting” or “adopting” commons-based approach. Are they adopting OA policies, for instance? Are they adopting Social Responsible License approaches?
    • Identify these cases and treat them as entities that will also be placed in our mapping device (the quadrants)
    • Identify what actors are participating on this and what actors are just observers (Use the questionnaire to guide your research when appropriate - Carol will select specific relevant and helpful questions)
  • BMC Biotechnology
    • Output: Narratives. Open Access Biotech Journal. Anyone can submit, though maintains a peer-review process
    • Governance: The site itself is part of Springer Science+Business Media
  • CAMBIA / BIOS
    • Output: Tools (e.g. new databases) and Narratives (studies and papers)
    • Governance: Non-profit NGO. Funding through the Norwegian Government, Horticulture Australia, and the Lemelson Foundation
    • Should definitely take a look at the BioForge project, which aims to encourage collaboration between research groups in the life sciences
  • Chiron
    • Output: Data. Chiron maintains connections to lots of individual scientists. Reported 1,400 informal agreements and collaborations with other companies and 64 formal collaborations with other companies (Powell pp. 72-73)
    • Comment: Seems Chiron has built a collaborative network qualitatively different from that of other firms. Likely worth investigating more
  • Distributed Annotation System
    • Products: Data, Narratives and Tools. Aims to create standard protocol for exchanging genomic annotations
    • Governance: Distributed, though with self-appointed leaders
    • Comment: This falls under the gray area of the definition of 'commons'. It is much closer to Lessig's definition, where something like TCP/IP could be considered a commons.
  • ENCODE
    • Products: Data. Open consortium to identify all functional elements of the human genome. Data is made publicly available
    • Governance: Part of the NIH
    • Comment: Perfect instance of commons-based production.
  • Ensembl Genome Browser
    • Output: Data. Aims to automatically annotate the genome, integrate that annotation with other databases and share the product freely on the web
    • Governance: Collaboration between the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
    • Comment: Interesting case - seems to be using data that's in the commons, managed by private organizations, to produce a new product that is also in the commons
  • HapMap
    • Products: Data. Coordination between researchers in Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, United Kingdom and the United States to identify disease-causing genes. Data released into the public domain
    • Governance: Combination of both public and private organizations (http://www.hapmap.org/groups.html)
    • Another good instance of commons-based production
  • Health Commons
    • Products: Data, Narratives and Tools. Coalition of organizations aim to share data under a common set of terms and conditions
    • Governance: lead by 501(c)3 Science Commons
  • Human Genome Project
    • Products: Data and Tools. Genome sequence available publicly
    • Governance: funded through the NIH
    • Comment: Another interesting instance of the commons - the government used the power of funding to mandate open access requirements from the organizations which participated.
  • National Center for Biotechnology Information
    • Output: Data. Creates publicly accessible data and analysis systems for biochemistry and genetics
    • Governance: Division of National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health
    • Comment: Probably does not count as a common-based system. The tools, while publicly available, do not appear to be publicly edit-able. Might be more useful to see what if any collaborative enterprises develop from this work
  • Personal Genome Project
    • Products: Data and Tools. Aims to make personal genome sequencing possible and affordable
    • Not clear that this is an instance of a commons. Right now, seems to me to be a free service.
  • Open Wet Ware
    • Primarily products: Data, Narratives and Tools. Sharing best practices in biological engineering
    • Governance: Elected officers, funded through the NSF
  • Open Biological Ontologies
    • Primarily products: Data, Narratives and Tools. Aims to support community of people developing biomedical ontologies
    • Governance: Coordinating editors from the Berkeley Bioinformatics Open-Source Projects - there does not seem to be a system of elections
  • Science Commons-Neurocommons
    • Primarily products: Data and Tools. Open Source Knowledge Management Platform for Biological Sciences, currently focusing on neuroscience
    • Governance: run through Science Commons

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Biotechnology_-_Genomic_and_Proteomics

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