"Science Literacy" - American Library Association, New Orleans June 2006

August 25, 2005, at 12:30 p.m., Eastern Daylight Savings Time

Updated August 27, 2005 10:42 a.m. EDT

September 8, 2005

WE ARE HERE

Sept 15, 2005

Telephoto view (north) of Laetoli trackway site, 1996
© J. Paul Getty Trust

Laetoli trackway, close-up of footprints in late afternoon, August 1995

Laetoli, May 1996; Oblique view of trackway used in autoCAD model

http://research.amnh.org/biodiversity/center/cbcnews/archive/sprng_sum01/song.html

Rheinardia ocellata, the Crested Argus. Photographed at night by an
automatic camera-trap in the Ngoc Linh foothills (Quang Nam Province).
Courtesy AMNH Center for Biodiversity and Conservation

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/wildideas/kids/job_ryder.html

http://www.atgc.org/Arabidopsis_Genome/x-ath-genome-002-small.png

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0674006771/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-4859238-9642354#reader-link

“Science Literacy” ?

“...the capacity to use scientific knowledge, to
identify questions, and to draw evidence-
based conclusions in order to understand
and help make decisions about the
natural world and the changes made to it
through human activity.”

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (1999). Measuring Knowledge
and Skills: A New Framework for Assessment. Paris: Author.

“Content or Structure”
“...involves broad science concepts from physics,
chemistry, biological sciences, and Earth and space
sciences. Concepts are incorporated more particularly
from themes such as biodiversity, forces and movement,
and physiological change, and are organized into several
broad areas of application: science in life and health,
science in Earth and environment, and science in
technology.”

U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education
Statistics“Outcomes of Learning: Results From the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment of
15-Year-Olds in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy Statistical Analysis Report December
2001, NCES 2002–115 http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002115.pdf

Biodiversity Resource Center
California Academy of Sciences
San Francisco

“Process”

“...includes thinking skills organized into five processes:

– recognizing scientifically investigable questions,
– identifying evidence needed in a scientific investigation,
– drawing or evaluating conclusions,
– communicating valid conclusions, and
– demonstrating comprehension of scientific concepts.”

U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education
Statistics“Outcomes of Learning: Results From the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment of
15-Year-Olds in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy Statistical Analysis Report December
2001, NCES 2002–115 http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002115.pdf

A Brief Digression:
TWO CULTURES???

“Finally, any nation that attempts to address the
urgent social problems of our time solely from a
scientific or a humanistic vantage point will surely
fail to find solutions that take account of the
essential and inescapable interconnections and
inter-dependencies among the different elements
of our natural and social worlds.”

Billy E. Frye, “Introduction”, IN The Humanities and The Sciences , American Council of
Learned Societies Occasional Paper No. 47, 1999.
http://www.acls.org/op47-3.htm#galison (MAY 31, 2006)

“What elements are necessary for creativity?”
(Nobel Laureate Jerome Friedman)

“I believe creativity requires a powerful imagination and a strong
intuition. Imagination is always an experimental process. It is
the ability to manipulate images and symbols in the mind to
make combinations that are totally new. Reasoning is
constructed with moveable images, just as poetry is. Very often
analogies are the threshold to creativity. Creativity often
results from combining images or ideas that appear to be quite
dissimilar. Since the number of possible combinations of
images in the imagination is exceedingly large, there must be
some constraints that help select those which seem most
promising. “

Jerome Friedman, “Creativitiy in Science”, IN The Humanities and The Sciences , American Council of Learned
Societies Occasional Paper No. 47, 1999. http://www.acls.org/op47-3.htm#galison (MAY 31, 2006)

Science Literacy =
Scientific Knowledge + Scientific Competence

Science Literacy requires both
a working competence with the practical
methodologies of science
and working access to
the complete library and archive of
scientific knowledge resources.

KNOWLEDGE RESOURCES:

Technology

Repatriation of biodiversity information through Clearing House Mechanism of the Convention on Biological
Diversity and Global Biodiversity Information Facility; Views and experiences of Peruvian and
Bolivian non-governmental organizations. Ulla Helimo Master’s Thesis University of Turku Department of
Biology 6.10. 2004 p.11. http://enbi.utu.fi/Documents/Ulla%20Helimo%20PRO%20GRADU.pdf [06-06-05]

Some Possible Working Definitions

“data” – observations, descriptions or measurements -- of
referent objects, events, processes -- recorded and
reported in a standard way
“experience” – personal or collective recollection and
interpretation of events
“information” – selected and composed patterns of data
having reasonable, testable properties of an hypothesis
“knowledge” – reasoned assumptions derived from the
analysis of information and experience , presumed to be
“true” and “reliable”, [even objective and invariant]
having predictive power and expert consensual support

The Knowledge Cycle
in the International Conservation
Community

Colin Bibby, 2002

“…we believe that the healthy functioning of
democracy depends crucially upon the
existence of a literate public; and in modern
industrial societies, true democracy must
embrace scientific literacy.”

J. Durant, G. Evans, and G. Thomas, “Public Understanding of Science in Britain,” Public Understanding of
Science 1 (1992): 161–182. Quoted in: Jon D. Miller, “The measurement of civic scientific literacy.” Public
Understand. Sci. 7 (1998) 203–223. http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~ccti/Documents/Miller1998.pdf

An Inconvenient Truth?
“Compared with practical science literacy, the
achievement of a functional level of civic science
literacy is a more protracted endeavor. Yet, it is a
job that sooner or later must be done, for as time
goes on human events will become even more
entwined in science, and science-related public
issues in the future can only increase in number
and in importance. Civic science literacy is a
cornerstone of informed public policy.”

B. S. P. Shen, “Scientific Literacy and the Public Understanding of Science,” in Communication of
Scientific Information, ed. S. Day (Basel: Karger, 1975), 44–52 Quoted in: Jon D. Miller, “The
measurement of civic scientific literacy.” Public Understand. Sci. 7 (1998) 203–223.
http://pascal.iseg.utl.pt/~ccti/Documents/Miller1998.pdf

Poder Politico y Conocimiento
Alto

Políticos
Responsabilidad y Poder

Administradores
o Gestores

Analistas-
Técnicos

Científicos

Alto
Bajo
Conocimiento (en términos científicos-occidentales)

(Sutton, 1999)

From: Organizaciones que aprenden, paises que aprenden: lecciones y AP en Costa Rica by Andrea
Ballestero Directora ELAP

Science Literacy as a Key to
Sustainable Development

“Science Literacy” is commonly invoked as a
a measure of national competitive deficit.

.
It can also be understood as an essential
competence for international sustainable
development.

http://www.iucn.org/ourwork/ppet/ [July 5, 2005 ]

“Improving Science Literacy and Conservation
in Developing Countries”
By Carlos L. de la Rosa
An ActionBioscience.org original article

Industrialized nations can help improve science literacy in developing
countries by:
• giving their institutions access to current scientific literature
• translating scientific information from English to other languages
• publishing papers by scientists from these countries
• creating literary exchanges between scientists everywhere

Carlos L. de la Rosa “Improving Science Literacy and Conservation in Developing Countries”
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/delarosa.html

Finland

“Structure of the World Wide Web in Finland. Circles denote sites and lines denote connecting links.”
Courtesy of Bernardo Hubernman (HP Labs, Palo Alto)
from B. Huberman The Laws of the Web, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001

$10,000.00
$15,000.00
$20,000.00
$25,000.00
$30,000.00
$35,000.00
$40,000.00

$5,000.00
$0.00
Luxembourg
Jersey
Faroe Islands
Kuwait
Chile
Belarus
Bulgaria
GDP

Peru
Jordan
Bolivia
Vietnam
Myanmar
Burkina Faso
Comoros
GDP

1000000
2000000
3000000
4000000
5000000
6000000
7000000
8000000
9000000

0
10000000
Japan
Poland
China
Philippines
Internet Hosts

Kazakhsta
Mauritius
Morocco
Senegal
Uganda
Honduras
Tunisia
Northern
Banglades
Hosts

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg

Information Gradient
Pakistan:
In the past 50 years…
32 universities and more than 100 colleges,
training institutes and other specialized
institutions of higher education have
been founded
[Syed Haider Abbas Zaidi, “Higher Education Pakistan”
http://www2.unesco.org/wef/f_conf/000000e2.htm ]

Peshawar,
NWFP,
Pakistan 1994

From: “xxxxxx” <xxxxxx@hotmail.com>
To: library@amnh.org
Subject: RESEARCH PAPERS REQUIRED
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 09:54:37 +0500

Dear sir,
I am a student of MSC. Veterinary Parasitology ... I need your
help because of that these research papers are not available & I
could not purchase these research papers which are mentioned in
below list with related to some research topics which are below
as
(1) Epidemiological evaluation of cattle lice/buffalo lice(or) Epidemiological studiessurey
cattle lice buffalo lice .
(2) Prevalence of cattle lice on calves (or) Prevalence of sucking & chewing lice on cattle
(3) incidence (or) Prevalence of sucking & chewing lice on cattleI will be thankfull to your
if you will send to me these research papers on my postal address (or) because of that
I can not purchase them.
(4) Taxonomical study of different species of cattle lice. Please send to me these research
papers as early as possible .
Postal address :Dr . xxxxxx House#xx,Street#xx Email address: xxxxx@ hotmail.com

RESEARCH PAPERS REQUIRED
1: Colwell DD, Clymer B, Booker CW, Guichon PT,
Jim GK, Schunicht OC, Wildman BK. Prevalence
of sucking and chewing lice on cattle entering
feedlots in southern Alberta.Can Vet J. 2001
Apr;42(4):281-
2: Chalmers K, Charleston WA. “Cattle lice in New
Zealand: observations on the prevalence,
distribution and seasonal patterns of infestation.”
N Z Vet J. 1980 Oct;28(10):198-200.

[SNIP]

“Broad access to scientific information is key for people to
understand, participate and respond to the challenges
that development poses to civilization. Understanding of
issues such as global warming, loss of biodiversity,
evolution, implications of genetic research, and many
other topics is essential, almost a requisite, for personal
involvement in these issues. They affect all of us, and the
better we understand them, the better we can respond with
appropriate actions, whether these are activism in public
causes or changes at the personal level.”

Carlos L. de la Rosa “Improving Science Literacy and Conservation in Developing
Countries” http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/delarosa.html

“Science literacy at the citizen's level in developing countries is
essential for the development of sustainability and for the
protection and conservation of irreplaceable global resources.
An environmentally aware society can make the right decisions about the environment
and support their leader's efforts towards sustainability. Developing countries, often
mired in internal political, social and economical struggles, can't afford to add
environmental deterioration to their problems, especially because of a lack of access to
relevant information. Since developed countries often produce and
publish much of this information, it behooves them to make the
extra effort to make the information available to the decision-
makers and citizens of developing countries.”

Carlos L. de la Rosa “Improving Science Literacy and Conservation in Developing Countries”
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/delarosa.html

“Science flourishes in a secular democracy” ???

“... two key elements [have] proven to be essential in
moving forward in science: secularism and a
working democracy, as exemplified by Turkey.
“... Turkey is the only member of the Organization
of the Islamic Conference (OIC) states with
universities ranking among the world's top 500,
and it leads OIC states in terms of annual output of
research papers…”

Correspondence: Iclal Büÿükderim-Özçelik, Tayfun Özçelik “Science flourishes in a secular
democracy” Nature 433, 355 (27 January 2005) | doi:10.1038/433355b
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7024/full/433355b.html

“The field of knowledge is the common
property of all mankind “
Thomas Jefferson 1807

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas through any
media and regardless of frontiers.
(emphasis added)

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

RIO DECLARATION ON ENVIRONMENT
AND DEVELOPMENT (1992)

Principle 10
Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all
concerned citizens, at the relevant level. At the national
level, each individual shall have appropriate
access to information concerning the
environment that is held by public authorities,
including information on hazardous materials and activities in
their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-
making processes. States shall facilitate and encourage public
awareness and participation by making information widely
available. Effective access to judicial and administrative
proceedings, including redress and remedy, shall be provided

Convention on Biological Diversity: Article 17

Exchange of Information
1. The Contracting Parties shall facilitate the exchange of information,
from all publicly available sources, relevant to the conservation and
sustainable use of biological diversity, taking into account the
special needs of developing countries.

2. Such exchange of information shall include exchange of results of
technical, scientific and socio-economic research, as well as
information on training and surveying programmes, specialized
knowledge, indigenous and traditional knowledge as such and in
combination with the technologies referred to in Article 16,
paragraph 1. It shall also, where feasible, include repatriation of
information.

UNESCO Universal Declaration
on Cultural Diversity. (2001)
9. Encouraging “digital literacy” and ensuring greater mastery of the
new information and communication technologies, which should be
seen both as educational discipline and as pedagogical tools capable
of enhancing the effectiveness of educational services;

10. Promoting linguistic diversity in cyberspace and encouraging universal
access through the global network to all information in the public
domain;

11. Countering the digital divide, in close cooperation in relevant United
Nations system organizations, by fostering access by the developing
countries to the new technologies, by helping them to master information
technologies and by facilitating the digital dissemination of
endogenous cultural products and access by those countries to the
educational, cultural and scientifi c digital resources available worldwide

http://unesdoc.UNESCO.org/images/0012/001271/127160m.pdf

UNESCO Universal Declaration
on Cultural Diversity. (2001)

“While ensuring the free flow of ideas by word and
image, care should be exercised that all cultures can
express themselves and make themselves known.
Freedom of expression, media pluralism,
multilingualism, equal access to art and to scientific
and technological knowledge, including in digital
form, and the possibility for all cultures to have
access to the means of expression and dissemination
are the guarantees of cultural diversity.”

http://unesdoc.UNESCO.org/images/0012/001271/127160m.pdf

UN Millenium Development Goals?

Recommendation 9
International donors should mobilize support for
global scientific research and development to
address special needs of the poor in areas of
health, agriculture, natural resource and
environmental management, energy, and climate.
We estimate the total needs to rise to
approximately $7 billion a year by 2015.

UN Millenium Project http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/recom_09.htm

“The substantive findings of science are a product of social
collaboration and are assigned to the community. They
constitute a common heritage in which the equity of the
individual producer is severely limited…”

“The scientist’s claim to “his” intellectual “property” is limited to
that of recognition and esteem which, if the institution functions
with a modicum of efficiency, is roughly commensurate with
the significance of the increments brought
to the common fund of knowledge.”

Robert K. Merton, “A Note on Science and Democarcy,” Journal of Law
and Political Sociology 1 (1942): 121.

“Factual data are fundamental to the progress of science
and to our preeminent system of innovation. Freedom
of inquiry, the open availability of scientific data, and
full disclosure of results through publication are the
cornerstones of basic research, which both domestic law
and the norms of public science have long upheld.”

J.H. Reichman and P.F Uhlir. “A contractually reconstructed research commons for scientific data
in a highly protectionist intellectual property environment.” in The Public Domain. J.Boyle, ed.
Durham, NC: schoolo of Law, Duke University. (Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol.66 nos 1&2 )
2003

“Public research is largely an open, communitarian, and cooperative
system. It is founded on freedom of inquiry, sharing of data and
full disclosure of results by scientists whose motivations are
rooted primarily in intellectual curiosity, the desire to influence the
thinking of others about the natural world, peer recognition for their
achievements, and promotion of the public interest.

“Although this normative and value structure of public science predated
the revolution in digitally networked technologies, it makes it ideally
suited to experiment with and exploit those new technological
capabilities, which themselves facilitate open, distributed and
cooperative uses of information.”

P.F. Uhlir. “Re-intermediation in the Republic of Science: Moving from
IntellectualProperty to Intellectual Commons.” Information Services and Use
23(2/3) 63-66. 2003

Society for Conservation Biology
Code of Ethics

Principle 1:
“Actively disseminate information to promote
understanding of and appreciation for
biodiversity and the science of conservation
biology.”

The Library Tradition

For hundreds of years, libraries have been the
“protected areas” of the knowledge commons.

The “public library” is a commons or zone of
“fair use” that makes knowledge freely and
equitably available to all.

“Fair Use”
in the Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws
Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code (Circular 92)

§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted
work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other
means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news
reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or
research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made
of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall
include —
• (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a
commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
• (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the
copyrighted work as a whole; and
• (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted
work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such
finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107 [06-29-05]

References to “Intellectual
Property” in U.S. federal cases
2000

1500

1000 "Intellectual
Property"
500

0 1900- 1920- 1930- 1940- 1950- 1960- 1970- 1980- 1990-
1919 1929 1939 1949 1959 1969 1979 1989 1999
"Intellectual Property" 1 0 4 9 15 11 56 341 1721

“Professor Hank Greely” Cited in Lessig, L. The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in
a connrcted world. NY, Random House, 2001. P. 294.

Should scientific knowledge be a “commodity” ???

???

Julian Birkinshaw and Tony Sheehan, “Managing the Knowledge Life Cycle,”
MIT Sloan Management Review, 44 (2) Fall, 2002: 77.

Research Commons
The Public Domain

Knowledge
Commons

THE ROLE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL DATA AND INFORMATION IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN PROCEEDINGS OF A
SYMPOSIUM Julie M. Esanu and Paul F. Uhlir, Editors Steering Committee on the Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information
in the Public Domain Office of International Scientific and Technical Information Programs Board on International Scientific
Organizations Policy and Global Affairs Division, National Research Council of the National Academies, p. 5

http://www.arl.org/newsltr/218/costimpact.html

But… is commercial publishing profitable…?

“…figures released by the largest publisher of scientific journals --
Amsterdam-based Elsevier -- help explain why many scientists and
others are frustrated. Its 1,700 journals, which produce $1.6 billion
in revenue, garner a remarkable 30 percent profit margin.

"I do realize that the 30 percent sticks out," Elsevier Vice
President Pieter Bolman said. "But what we still do feel -- and this
is, I think, where the real measure is -- we're still very much in the
top of author satisfaction and reader satisfaction.

Rick Weiss, “A Fight for Free Access To Medical Research” The Washington Post
(Section: Nation, A01 ) 08/05/2003

Testimony of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan
Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the US Congress
Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,U.S. Senate July 16, 2002

“Why did corporate governance checks and balances that served us reasonably
well in the past break down? At root was the rapid enlargement of stock
market capitalizations in the latter part of the 1990s that arguably engendered
an outsized increase in opportunities for avarice. An infectious greed seemed
to grip much of our business community. Our historical guardians of
financial information were overwhelmed. Too many corporate executives
sought ways to "harvest" some of those stock market gains. As a result, the
highly desirable spread of shareholding and options among business managers
perversely created incentives to artificially inflate reported earnings in order to
keep stock prices high and rising. This outcome suggests that the options were
poorly structured, and, consequently, they failed to properly align the long-
term interests of shareholders and managers, the paradigm so essential for
effective corporate governance. The incentives they created overcame the
good judgment of too many corporate managers. It is not that humans have
become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to
express greed had grown so enormously. “

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/2002/july/testimony.htm

“Coordination” & Monopoly
“…major commercial journals appear to enjoy substantial
monopoly power despite the absence of obvious legal barriers
to entry by new competing journals. … journals achieve
monopoly power…”:

1) by a ‘‘coordination game’’ -- the most capable authors and
referees are attracted to journals with established reputations.

2) by copyright law -- restricts competitors from selling ‘‘perfect
substitutes’’ for existing journals by publishing exactly the
same articles. (in contrast, sellers of shoes or houses are not
restrained from producing nearly identical copies of their
competitors’ products.)

Carl T. Bergstrom and Theodore C. Bergstrom, “The costs and benefits of library site licenses to academic
journals,” PNAS, January 20, 2004, vol. 101(3):897. http://www.pnas.orgcgidoi10.1073pnas.0305628101

http://are.berkeley.edu/courses/EEP39C/cartel.pdf

“Orphan Works”?
BOOKS [“Monographs” ]

For example, in 1930, there were 10,027 books published in the United States.
In 2001, 174 of those books were still in print.
That means 9,853 books were out of print, but still presumably protected by
copyright.

"Presumably" because, in the U.S., the protection of copyright reaches back to 1923.
But only presumably because, for works created before 1978, a copyright had to be
registered to be secured and then renewed for the author to enjoy a full term of
copyright protection. At least half of all works published historically never took the
first step; almost 90% never took the second.

The vast majority of creative work published in 1930, therefore, is in the public
domain. But it is extremely costly to know which works in particular are in that
category. And for those works that remain under copyright, unless new editions
containing the latest copyright information become available - a reprint of an old
book, say, or a DVD of an old movie - tracking down the current owners can
require hours of detective work that may come up empty.

Let a Thousand Googles Bloom Copyright reform is vital to the spread of culture and information.
By Lawrence Lessig January 12, 2005 ----
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lessig12jan12,0,7164490.story
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

Differing Interpretations of IPR Regulation

Mouse
Current Norms Maximalists
Reductionists Expansionists

BENEFITS

Intellectual Property Rights

“…a clash of business models.”
-- Kevin Kelly
“Authors and publishers (including publishers of music and film) have relied for years on
cheap mass-produced copies protected from counterfeits and pirates by a strong law
based on the dominance of copies and on a public educated to respect the sanctity of a
copy. This model has, in the last century or so, produced the greatest flowering of human achievement the world has
ever seen, a magnificent golden age of creative works. Protected physical copies have enabled millions of people to
earn a living directly from the sale of their art to the audience, without the weird dynamics of patronage. Not only did
authors and artists benefit from this model, but the audience did, too. For the first time, billions of ordinary people
were able to come in regular contact with a great work. In Mozart's day, few people ever heard one of his symphonies
more than once. With the advent of cheap audio recordings, a barber in Java could listen to them all day long.

“But a new regime of digital technology has now disrupted all business models based on
mass-produced copies, including individual livelihoods of artists. The contours of the
electronic economy are still emerging, but while they do, the wealth derived from the old business model is being
spent to try to protect that old model, through legislation and enforcement. Laws based on the mass-
produced copy artifact are being taken to the extreme, while desperate measures to
outlaw new technologies in the marketplace "for our protection" are introduced in
misguided righteousness. (This is to be expected. The fact is, entire industries and the fortunes of those
working in them are threatened with demise. Newspapers and magazines, Hollywood, record labels, broadcasters and
many hard-working and wonderful creative people in those fields have to change the model of how they earn money.
Not all will make it.)”

Kevin Kelly, “Scan This Book!” NYT. Published: May 14, 2006

Access Spectrum: Business Models for Knowledge Resources

Proprietary Service / “Associative” Values
Values Commodity Values

Licensed Qualified Open access /
Purchase Access / Unrestricted
No Access access Qualified Access
Limited Use use

http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/

Science Commons:
Socially Responsible Licensing of Intellectual Property
The global poor have inadequate access to medicines even those developed by
universities. Global pricing policies of such medicines effectively denies access to
80% of the worlds population, though the developing world makes up only 5% of
the worldwide market for drugs. This result is contrary both to basic ethics and to
the university systems mission to spread the benefits of its knowledge. Often, this
is because of the pressure to achieve patentable successes rather than public goods.
Similarly, research on rare diseases (and indeed on many diseases common only in
developing nations) is not incentivised in part because of complex and
inappropriate licensing frameworks. Current legal tools often do not yield packages
of rights that give the basic permissions needed to turn research into viable drugs
and treatment regimens, and can in fact discourage product development altogether.
In response, Science Commons has begun hosting a tightly knit informal working
group of elite university technology transfer managers who discuss access to
essential technology for orphan disease and developing country healthcare.
Members of the group have developed the first draft of an Equitable Access
License (EAL) that would reduce the barriers required for a university wishing to
license its technology for commercialization but with a humanitarian exception that
allows research for diseases affecting the global poor and for rare diseases. We
expect to release the EAL over the coming months, and will be launching an
adoption campaign aimed at top research university administration and licensing
offices.

Science Commons:
Alternatives for Scholars

An Ethical Spectrum ? –
Support for Scientific Knowledge Commons

Human Health Agriculture Biotechnology

Conservation Nuclear Technology

The Conservation Commons
promotes and enables
conscious, effective and equitable sharing
of knowledge resources
to advance conservation.

PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSERVATION
COMMONS

Open Access
The Conservation Commons promotes free and open access to data,
information and knowledge for all conservation purposes.
Mutual Benefit
The Conservation Commons welcomes and encourages participants to both
use resources and to contribute data, information and knowledge.
Rights and Responsibilities
Contributors to the Conservation Commons have full right to attribution for
any uses of their data, information, or knowledge, and the right to ensure that
the original integrity of their contribution to the Commons is preserved. Users
of the Conservation Commons are expected to comply, in good faith, with
terms of uses specified by contributors.
http://www.conservationcommons.org/section.php?section=principle&sous-section=endorsement&langue=en

Organizations that have formally endorsed the Principles
American Museum of Natural History
National Geographic Society
ARKive: The Wildscreen Trust (UK) (Website of the year)
Nature Protection Trust of Seychelles
BirdLife International
Nature Serve *
BP
PALNet - Protected Areas Learning Network (from WCPA of IUCN)
Centre for Sustainable Watersheds (Canada)
Philippine Society for the Protection of Animals (Web link not available)
Chevron-Texaco
Réseau Africain pour la conservation de la Mangrove (RAM)
Chevron-Texaco Specific Endorsement Letter
Red Hat
CIFOR
Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC), Centre for Forestry and Gov
CONABIO - Mexico
Rio Tinto
Conservation Biology Institute, USA
Salim Ali Centre for Ornithilogy and Natural History (SACON-India)
Conservation International *
Shell Exploration
CRIA - Brazil *
Society for Conservation GIS
DIDG Information Systems Ltd. (Australia)
South African National Biodiversity Institute - SANBI *
Earth Conservation Toolbox
The African Conservation Foundation
Environmental Education Center - Russia "Zapoveniks“
The Big Sky Conservation Institute
Erawan Interactive: Digital Publishing
The Natural History Museum, London
ETI BioInformatics
The Nature Conservancy *
Fauna & Flora International
The Rainforest Alliance
Friends of Nature - Bolivia
The Smithsonian Institution
GBIF - Global Biodiversity Information Facility *
The World Conservation Union, Pakistan
Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP)
The Zoological Society of London
Global Transboundary Protected Areas Network of IUCN
TRAFFIC International
GreenFacts
TROPI-DRY: forest research network (based in U.Alberta) UNDP
INBio, National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica
UNEP WCMC
Information Center for the Environment (ICE), U. of California, Davis
Unesco
INSnet, Internetwork for Sustainability
University of Maryland - Global Land Cover Facility *
Instituto de Biología, U.N.A.M. Mexico
Wetlands of India (hosted by SACON-India)
Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt (Colombia)
Wild Bird Club of the Philippines
International Center for Himalayan Biodiversity (link unavailable for now)
Wildlife Conservation Society
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA of IUCN)
Invasive Species Specialist Group of IUCN/SSC (Species Survival Commission)
WWF Brazil
IUCN - The World Conservation Union *
WWF International
My Nature (based in Romania)
NASA *

What is GenBank?

GenBank® is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all
publicly available DNA sequences ( Nucleic Acids Research 2005 January
13;33(Database Issue):D34-D36). There are approximately 59,750,386,305
bases in 54,584,635 sequence records in the traditional GenBank divisions
and 63,183,065,091 bases in 12,465,546 sequence records in the WGS
division as of February 2006.

The complete release notes for the current version of GenBank are available
on the NCBI ftp site. A new release is made every two months. GenBank is
part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, which
comprises the DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ), the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory (EMBL), and GenBank at NCBI. These three
organizations exchange data on a daily basis.

An example of a GenBank record may be viewed for a Saccharomyces
cerevisiae gene.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/

Submissions to GenBank?

Many journals require submission of sequence information to a database prior to
publication so that an accession number may appear in the paper. The WWW-
based submission tool, called BankIt, for convenient and quick submission of
sequence data. Sequin, NCBI's stand-alone submission software for MAC, PC,
and UNIX platforms, is available by FTP. When using Sequin, the output files
for direct submission should be sent to GenBank by electronic mail.
There are specialized, streamlined procedures for batch submissions of sequences,
such as EST, STS, and GSS sequences.


Action Plan for Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

“This Action Plan is a product of the Biodiversity Informatics Subgroup (BIS) of the Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) Megascience Forum's Working Group on Biological Informatics. This
document provides a provisional Action Plan for implementing the GBIF. Once initial governance and staffing for
the effort are in place, this plan will be further improved and refined.

“The GBIF will be established under the aegis of the OECD. Its Governing Board will be constituted by those
countries that choose to support the GBIF. The Governing Board will be responsible for the selection and hiring of
the Director and staff of the GBIF Secretariat, and for deciding among tenders for the siting of the GBIF
Secretariat. The Secretariat staff will be accountable to the Governing Board, and will be advised as necessary by
ad hoc Scientific and Technical Advisory Groups. The initial term of service of the Director and other Secretariat
staff will be approximately 5 years. Scientific and Technical Advisory Groups will serve for only the amount of
time needed to produce their reports, as requested by the Governing Board and the Secretariat.

“Once five or more countries have elected to participate in the Governing Board and have appointed their individual
delegates, the Governing Board can begin to function on an initial basis. The target is for the Governing Board to
hold its first meeting before January 2000. Countries may elect to support GBIF at any time, and send delegates to
future meetings of the Governing Board.

“The GBIF Secretariat will work internationally to co-ordinate national and regional efforts. In addition, it will manage
(through a competitive granting mechanism) a small amount of seed money (that is, a small percentage of the total
funds necessary for the activities that it will encourage) to be used for leveraging activities being conducted by
other agencies/countries.”

http://www.gbif.org/GBIF_org/facility/BIrepfin.pdf

The American Museum of Natural
History has published ca. 6,000
publications and 240,000+ pages of
scientific literature.
This entire corpus of literature was
digitized (with the support of the
AW Mellon Foundation) and in
January, 2006 was made available
through an (open source) DSpace
application. To mid-May, 2006 ca.
250,000 documents complete pdf’s
had been downloaded.

SEE:
http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/

The Biodiversity
Heritage Library Project

prospectus

Participating libraries:
• American Museum of Natural History
• Harvard University Botany Libraries
• Harvard University, Ernst Mayr Library
of the Museum of Comparative Zoology
• Missouri Botanical Garden
• Natural History Museum, London
• The New York Botanical Gardens
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• Smithsonian Institution

The Biodiversity Heritage Library Project

MEMORANDUM OF COOPERATION to develop a
PARTNERSHIP FOR THE BIODIVERSITY
HERITAGE LIBRARY PROJECT
The Biodiversity Heritage Library Project (BHL) is an international library
collaboration of natural history museums and botanical libraries to facilitate the
digitization of the published literature on biodiversity.

Mission
The published literature on biological diversity is rare or has limited global distribution
and is available in only a few select libraries. From a scholarly perspective, these
collections are of exceptional value because the domain of systematic biology
depends -- more than any other science -- upon historic literature. Yet, this wealth
of knowledge is available only to those few who can gain direct access to these
collections. This body of biodiversity knowledge is thus effectively withheld from
wide use for a broad range of applications.
We intend to establish a major corpus of digitized publications on the Web drawn from
the historical biodiversity literature in our collections. This material will be
available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global Biodiversity
Commons. We will work with the global taxonomic community, rights holders and
other interested parties to ensure that this biodiversity heritage is available to all.
We will seek and obtain funding for this project.

Google Earth

Tom Moritz
Getty Research Institute
tmoritz@getty.edu

"Science Literacy" - American Library Association, New Orleans June 2006

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