The document discusses building a "Biodiversity Commons" to provide free universal access to biodiversity information. It argues that barriers to access caused by weak data management and proprietary restrictions on information must be addressed. The solution proposed is to promote materials in the public domain and develop an "information commons" that guarantees free access to biodiversity data for conservation purposes while still allowing intellectual property rights to be maintained elsewhere. True costs of information creation can be recovered as long as access to essential public good information is not restricted by costs.
Leveraging A Wiki To Enhance Virtual Collaboration In The Emergency DomainConnie White
In a crisis situation, critical success factors include good preparedness, the availability of
trustworthy information and reliable people, and the responders' ability to improvise with the available, functioning tools. Wikis can be used as collaborative group support systems to support these activities, especially for communities of practice that must operate as high reliability organizations. The advantages of using a wiki are especially beneficial in volatile environments, such as those in the emergency domain, where critical real-time decision making is required. An international wiki - emergenciWiki.org - has been created and is being used by both practitioners and academics. The conclusions include that wiki features and functionality, which are important for safetycritical work, should add a minimum of bureaucratic overhead while helping to establish trust and a sense of purpose and community among the users, strengthening each individual user's accountability for their actions, or easing the evaluation of information reliability. (*note emergenciWiki.org project is over)
Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural and genetic Resources Commons.
12-14th September 2012
Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
The 1st Global Thematic IASC Conference on the Knowledge Commons aims to bring together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, social science researchers, practitioners and policy analysts, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of institutional arrangements designed to emulate key public domain conditions for collaborative research.
Governing Pooled Knowledge Resources with special attention to the fields of medicine and the environment.
SEPTEMBER 5-7, 2014
New York University School of Law
New York, New York USA
IASCKC.NYUENGELBERG.ORG
How are knowledge, information, and other shared intellectual resources governed? Building upon the successful 2012 global thematic IASC conference on knowledge commons, this 2nd conference aims to take stock of the latest developments in the interdisciplinary study of knowledge commons. The conference will seek to better understand how knowledge commons work, where they come from, what contributes to their durability and effectiveness, and what undermines them. This year’s program will highlight knowledge commons in the fields of medicine and the environment by devoting special
paper tracks and policy sessions to those topics.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 28, 2014
Leveraging A Wiki To Enhance Virtual Collaboration In The Emergency DomainConnie White
In a crisis situation, critical success factors include good preparedness, the availability of
trustworthy information and reliable people, and the responders' ability to improvise with the available, functioning tools. Wikis can be used as collaborative group support systems to support these activities, especially for communities of practice that must operate as high reliability organizations. The advantages of using a wiki are especially beneficial in volatile environments, such as those in the emergency domain, where critical real-time decision making is required. An international wiki - emergenciWiki.org - has been created and is being used by both practitioners and academics. The conclusions include that wiki features and functionality, which are important for safetycritical work, should add a minimum of bureaucratic overhead while helping to establish trust and a sense of purpose and community among the users, strengthening each individual user's accountability for their actions, or easing the evaluation of information reliability. (*note emergenciWiki.org project is over)
Building Institutions for Sustainable Scientific, Cultural and genetic Resources Commons.
12-14th September 2012
Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
The 1st Global Thematic IASC Conference on the Knowledge Commons aims to bring together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, social science researchers, practitioners and policy analysts, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of institutional arrangements designed to emulate key public domain conditions for collaborative research.
Governing Pooled Knowledge Resources with special attention to the fields of medicine and the environment.
SEPTEMBER 5-7, 2014
New York University School of Law
New York, New York USA
IASCKC.NYUENGELBERG.ORG
How are knowledge, information, and other shared intellectual resources governed? Building upon the successful 2012 global thematic IASC conference on knowledge commons, this 2nd conference aims to take stock of the latest developments in the interdisciplinary study of knowledge commons. The conference will seek to better understand how knowledge commons work, where they come from, what contributes to their durability and effectiveness, and what undermines them. This year’s program will highlight knowledge commons in the fields of medicine and the environment by devoting special
paper tracks and policy sessions to those topics.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 28, 2014
Preliminary detailed program of key-note sessions and full paper parallel sessions.
The 1st Global Thematic IASC Conference on the Knowledge Commons brings together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, social science researchers, practitioners
and policy analysts, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of institutional arrangements designed to emulate key public domain conditions for collaborative research.
"Toward Sustainability: "Margin" and "Mission" in the Natural History Setting...Tom Moritz
"Toward Sustainability: "Margin" and "Mission" in the Natural History Setting": National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) at New York Public Library, 2003
Ostrom’s crypto-principles? Towards a commons-based approach for the use of B...David Rozas
Sildes from presentation at "Science, politics, activism and citizenship". Redes CTS & Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology (Valencia, 31/05/2018).
December 2013 - Social and juridical aspects of Distance EducationFGV Brazil
FGV Online Magazine - December 2013
Social and juridical aspects of Distance Education - Brazilian copyright law and its impacto on virtual leearning environment.
FGV Online website: http://www.fgv.br/fgvonline
Preliminary detailed program of key-note sessions and full paper parallel sessions.
The 1st Global Thematic IASC Conference on the Knowledge Commons brings together leading people from a number of international scientific research communities, social science researchers, practitioners
and policy analysts, to discuss the rationale and practical feasibility of institutional arrangements designed to emulate key public domain conditions for collaborative research.
"Toward Sustainability: "Margin" and "Mission" in the Natural History Setting...Tom Moritz
"Toward Sustainability: "Margin" and "Mission" in the Natural History Setting": National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) at New York Public Library, 2003
Ostrom’s crypto-principles? Towards a commons-based approach for the use of B...David Rozas
Sildes from presentation at "Science, politics, activism and citizenship". Redes CTS & Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology (Valencia, 31/05/2018).
December 2013 - Social and juridical aspects of Distance EducationFGV Brazil
FGV Online Magazine - December 2013
Social and juridical aspects of Distance Education - Brazilian copyright law and its impacto on virtual leearning environment.
FGV Online website: http://www.fgv.br/fgvonline
Would your church hire the apostle paulKen Matthews
What qualifications does your church have as they evaluate candidates for ministry? Would you consider the requirements biblical? Examine your churches qualifications for leadership in light of the attached illustration.
IJERA (International journal of Engineering Research and Applications) is International online, ... peer reviewed journal. For more detail or submit your article, please visit www.ijera.com
International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (American...Tom Moritz
Meeting of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER) at the American Museum of Natural History, May, 2004, New York, New York
(GAPMIL) FRAMEWORK AND PLAN OF ACTION FOR THE GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR PARTNERSHIP...eraser Juan José Calderón
FRAMEWORK AND PLAN OF ACTION FOR THE GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR PARTNERSHIPS ON MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY (GAPMIL)
Promoting Media and Information Literacy (MIL) as a Means to Open and Inclusive Development
The internet has fast become the first port of call for all searches. The increasing array of chemistry-related resources now available provides chemists a direct path to the discovery of information, one previously accessed via library services and limited to commercial and costly resources. The diversity of information available online is expanding at a dramatic rate and a shift to publicly available resources offers significant opportunities in terms of the benefit to science and society. While the data available online do not generally meet the quality standards available from manually curated sources there are efforts afoot to gather scientists and “crowd source” an improvement in the quality of available data. This article will discuss the types of public compound databases available online, provide a series of example databases and focus on the benefits and disruptions associated with the increased availability of such data and integrating technologies to data-mine the available information.
Data hosting infrastructure for primary biodiversity dataPhil Cryer
Today, an unprecedented volume of primary biodiversity data are being generated worldwide, yet significant amounts of these data have been and will continue to be lost after the conclusion of the projects tasked with collecting them. To get the most value out of these data it is imperative to seek a solution whereby these data are rescued, archived and made available to the biodiversity community. To this end, the biodiversity informatics community requires investment in processes and infrastructure to mitigate data loss and provide solutions for long-term hosting and sharing of biodiversity data.
We review the current state of biodiversity data hosting and investigate the technological and sociological barriers to proper data management. We further explore the rescuing and re-hosting of legacy data, the state of existing toolsets and propose a future direction for the development of new discovery tools. We also explore the role of data standards and licensing in the context of data hosting and preservation. We provide five recommendations for the biodiversity community that will foster better data preservation and access: (1) encourage the community’s use of data standards, (2) promote the public domain licensing of data, (3) establish a community of those involved in data hosting and archival, (4) establish hosting centers for biodiversity data, and (5) develop tools for data discovery.
The community’s adoption of standards and development of tools to enable data discovery is essential to sustainable data preservation. Furthermore, the increased adoption of open content licensing, the establishment of data hosting infrastructure and the creation of a data hosting and archiving community are all necessary steps towards the community ensuring that data archival policies become standardized.
BMC Bioinformatics 2011, 12(Suppl 15):S5 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-12-S15-S5
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/12/S15/S5
The internet has fast become the first port of call for all searches. The increasing array of chemistry-related resources now available provides chemists a direct path to the discovery of information, one previously accessed via library services and limited to commercial and costly resources. The diversity of information available online is expanding at a dramatic rate and a shift to publicly available resources offers significant opportunities in terms of the benefit to science and society. While the data available online do not generally meet the quality standards available from manually curated sources there are efforts afoot to gather scientists and “crowd source” an improvement in the quality of available data. This article will discuss the types of public compound databases available online, provide a series of example databases and focus on the benefits and disruptions associated with the increased availability of such data and integrating technologies to data-mine the available information.
Open Source Software for Digital Preservation Repositories : A SurveyIJCSES Journal
In the digital age, the amount of data produced is growing exponentially. Governments and institutions can no longer rely on old methods for storing data and passing on the knowledge to future generations. Digital data preservation is a mandatory issue that needs proper strategies and tools. With this awareness, efforts are being made to create and perfect software solutions capable of responding to the challenge of properly preserving digital information. This paper focuses on the state-of-the-art in open-source software solutions for the digital preservation and curation field used to assimilate and disseminate information to designated audiences. Eleven open source projects for digital preservation are surveyed in areas such as supported standards and protocols, strategies for preservation, methodologies for reporting, dynamic of development, targeted operating systems, multilingual support and open source license. Furthermore, five of these open
source projects, are further analysed, with focus on features deemed important for the area. Along open source solutions, the paper also briefly surveys the standards and protocols relevant for digital data preservation. The area of digital data preservation repositories has several open source solutions, which can form the base to overcome the challenges to reach mature and reliable digital data preservation.
Open Source Software for Digital Preservation Repositories : A SurveyIJCSES Journal
In the digital age, the amount of data produced is growing exponentially. Governments and institutions can no longer rely on old methods for storing data and passing on the knowledge to future generations. Digital data preservation is a mandatory issue that needs proper strategies and tools. With this awareness, efforts are being made to create and perfect software solutions capable of responding to the challenge of properly preserving digital information. This paper focuses on the state-of-the-art in open-source software solutions for the digital preservation and curation field used to assimilate and disseminate information to designated audiences. Eleven open source projects for digital preservation are surveyed in areas such as supported standards and protocols, strategies for preservation, methodologies for reporting, dynamic of development, targeted operating systems, multilingual support and open source license. Furthermore, five of these open
source projects, are further analysed, with focus on features deemed important for the area. Along open source solutions, the paper also briefly surveys the standards and protocols relevant for digital data preservation. The area of digital data preservation repositories has several open source solutions, which can form the base to overcome the challenges to reach mature and reliable digital data preservation.
Ecological Society of America Science CommonsTom Moritz
Ecological Society of America
"Obstacles to Data Sharing in Ecology"
(NSF Workshop)
National Evolutionary Synthesis Center
Durham, North Carolina
May 30, 2007
Science and the limits of our current regime for intellectual property.
Operation “Blue Star” is the only event in the history of Independent India where the state went into war with its own people. Even after about 40 years it is not clear if it was culmination of states anger over people of the region, a political game of power or start of dictatorial chapter in the democratic setup.
The people of Punjab felt alienated from main stream due to denial of their just demands during a long democratic struggle since independence. As it happen all over the word, it led to militant struggle with great loss of lives of military, police and civilian personnel. Killing of Indira Gandhi and massacre of innocent Sikhs in Delhi and other India cities was also associated with this movement.
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty, In...Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty,
International FDP on Fundamentals of Research in Social Sciences
at Integral University, Lucknow, 06.06.2024
By Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
A workshop hosted by the South African Journal of Science aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers with little or no experience in writing and publishing journal articles.
Introduction to AI for Nonprofits with Tapp NetworkTechSoup
Dive into the world of AI! Experts Jon Hill and Tareq Monaur will guide you through AI's role in enhancing nonprofit websites and basic marketing strategies, making it easy to understand and apply.
Biological screening of herbal drugs: Introduction and Need for
Phyto-Pharmacological Screening, New Strategies for evaluating
Natural Products, In vitro evaluation techniques for Antioxidants, Antimicrobial and Anticancer drugs. In vivo evaluation techniques
for Anti-inflammatory, Antiulcer, Anticancer, Wound healing, Antidiabetic, Hepatoprotective, Cardio protective, Diuretics and
Antifertility, Toxicity studies as per OECD guidelines
Normal Labour/ Stages of Labour/ Mechanism of LabourWasim Ak
Normal labor is also termed spontaneous labor, defined as the natural physiological process through which the fetus, placenta, and membranes are expelled from the uterus through the birth canal at term (37 to 42 weeks
Unit 8 - Information and Communication Technology (Paper I).pdfThiyagu K
This slides describes the basic concepts of ICT, basics of Email, Emerging Technology and Digital Initiatives in Education. This presentations aligns with the UGC Paper I syllabus.
Unit 8 - Information and Communication Technology (Paper I).pdf
Moritz D Lib Building The Biodiversity Commons
1. D-Lib Magazine
June 2002
Volume 8 Number 6
ISSN 1082-9873
Building the Biodiversity Commons
Thomas Moritz
American Museum of Natural History
tmoritz@amnh.org
(This Opinion piece presents the opinions of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of D-Lib
Magazine, its publisher, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, or its sponsor.)
Provision of free, universal access to biodiversity information is a practical imperative for
the international conservation community — this goal should be accomplished by promotion
of the Public Domain and by development of a sustainable Biodiversity Information
Commons adapting emergent legal and technical mechanisms to provide a free, secure and
persistent environment for access to and use of biodiversity information and data.
Problems
Biodiversity Information. A very extensive body of data and information has been
accumulated concerning the world's biological diversity. These resources reside in
universities, libraries, museums, government agencies, research institutions and conservation
organizations as well as in the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples. They are
typically not coherently organized — nor integrated — so it is difficult for researchers to
quickly and effectively find the data and information they need. Major investments continue
to be made to expand this raw knowledge base. To date because these data and information
are generally not coherently managed, even key stakeholders have only fragmentary,
incomplete access to them.
Beyond the limitations imposed by inadequate management, the quot;ownershipquot; or quot;intellectual
property rightsquot; (IPR) vested in these resources creates barriers to access for many
stakeholders in the world biodiversity conservation community. When limitations of
proprietary control are amplified by market-based charges for acquisition or use of data or
information, barriers may be insurmountable. Compounding this problem is the conspicuous
global disproportion in distribution of wealth and the huge continuing investment in
unsustainable development met with inadequate levels of investment in conservation.
Thus, while weak management of information impedes the fully informed participation of
many stakeholders in biodiversity conservation, marketbased cost barriers exclude entire
sectors of the global community.
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2. The Information Gradient/Digital Divide. There has long been an quot;information gradientquot;
that runs North to South and prevents most peoples in the South (as well as many in the
North) from equitable, direct access to biodiversity information. This gradient is both digital
and analog. (As an instance of the quot;analogquot; portion of this gradient, in Pakistan, prior to
partition with India there was a single university; in the subsequent 50 years 32 universities
and more than 100 colleges, training institutes and other specialized institutions of higher
education have been founded 1. A review of simple collections measures such as serial
holdings in these university libraries reveals the extremity of the North-South disparity in
distribution of information resources.)
Moreover, the ascendancy of the Internet, in particular with regard to the use of the Web,
adds a layer of technological complexity and cost to an international information regime that
is already severely inequitable. The gradient most adversely affects the communities most
likely to engage in constructive conservation — the public sector, the applied conservation
community (NGOs, etc.), the academic/education community and the research sectors.
(These are, of course, overlapping sectors.)
The quot;Second Enclosurequot; Movement.2 The past decade has seen the emergence of a quot;second
enclosurequot; movement as information has increasingly been treated as a commodity subject to
new proprietary restrictions. Even organizations that do not seek direct profit from
information (e.g., many conservation organizations) are hesitant to make their data and
information freely available for fear that they will be taken advantage of (i.e., be seen
somehow to have incompetently quot;given away the storequot;).
In this commercial information environment, market mechanisms and the assertion of
quot;intellectual property rightsquot; are incompatible with free, equitable and universal access to
essential information and data for all members of the international community. The
difficulties originally posed by proprietary restrictions on production of AIDS drugs are but
one example of how the prevalent regime of intellectual property rights and laws can fail to
serve the common good. As has happened in the case of AIDS drugs, international civil
society must come to broad consensus concerning the classes of data and information whose
necessity to the public good transcends the utility of market control or the requirements of
corporate self-interest3.
Solution: Biodiversity Commons 4
Public Domain. In Anglo-American law the notion of the quot;public domainquot; recognizes that
there is broad social value to placing information in a public commons for free, general use
by all (including commercial uses). Much conservation information and data can simply be
placed in the public domain, and the international conservation community should support
and encourage such placement. Instances of this class of information might include
taxonomic names of organisms and a basic world database of protected areas.
However, there are many instances of information that are not in the public domain that
present more complex rights management dilemmas. For example, some images owned by
professional photographers might be made available for not-for-profit conservation uses —
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3. particularly as low-resolution derivatives — but also could be licensed or sold as higher
resolution digital objects for commercial use. Complexly composed data or information
objects (involving information or data licensed from multiple sources) may similarly be
inappropriate or unavailable for unconditional placement in the public domain.
Information Commons. An quot;information commonsquot; defines a community of use and
guarantees free unhindered access to data and information for that community within a
defined information space. Such a commons is composed of public domain data and
information as well as otherwise protected information that is made openly available and that
limits the full exercise of intellectual property rights by rights holders. Producers of
information may assign rights to such a commons (just as owners of real estate may grant
development quot;easementsquot; on their property to a conservancy) while maintaining traditional
controls over their intellectual property rights in the larger international commercial market
domain. This is sometimes described as a quot;conditionalquot; (or even quot;impurequot;) domain of use.
Cost Factors
Digital Information as a Public Good and as an Extensible Resource. A unique property
of information — particularly in digital form — is that it is not a finite resource in the sense
that copies or additional increments of use of information and data, once created, have
virtually zero transaction costs. Hence, the quot;tragedy of the commonsquot;5 syndrome does not
apply. In economic terms, these digital resources are quot;nonrivalrousquot;. This distinctive quality
of digital information enables the provision of open access on the Internet at virtually no
additional cost for each incremental user.
True Costs of Information. Of course, information does have costs associated with its
creation, production, and dissemination, or with the building of a system of incentives to
generate new or enhanced information. Recovery of costs is certainly legitimate — to the
extent that such efforts do not bar equitable access to and use of information and data that
are essential public goods. Thus, the fundamental heuristic questions are: Does the
information or data in question clearly serve the public interest (e.g., biodiversity
conservation), and should access to such information be restricted by cost? The issue of
appropriate compensations (cost recovery) and incentives (financial or other) for producers of
information must be frankly addressed in ways that do not contradict the requirements for
free access. (Obviously, when constrained in this way, quot;cost recoveryquot; is largely limited to
other-than-conventional market-based strategies.)
A fundamental principle is that, in so far as possible, all biodiversity information from its
inception should be dedicated to free not-for-profit, research, education and conservation
uses and planning for cost recovery should embrace the fundamental goal of free universal
access. (Constraints on this principle may be required in order to extend protections to
species or communities subject to targeted exploitation for example, rare orchids, etc.)
By careful design and modeling, it is possible to create a technical, legal and policy
environment that allows creators/contributors of data or information to permit use to some
defined community of conservation stakeholders while maintaining the possibility of cost-
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4. recovery (or even for-profit revenues). For example, it is possible that commercial publishers
could assign rights to the Commons for selected papers or articles within journals — thus
conditionally participating — labeling the selected articles with the quot;Biodiversity Commonsquot;
logo 6.
Attribution and Information Integrity
Non-financial Compensation/Incentives: Integrity and Attribution/Impact. The producers
of information have a responsibility to conserve the integrity of their information products,
and thus they legitimately expect full respect for the integrity of their information products
— whether made part of the public domain information or of a commons/conservancy. In the
sciences particularly, this expectation of respect for original integrity of information or data is
primarily a cultural norm. Disrespect for the integrity of information or data results in the
discrediting of resulting work and in shunning of the culpable parties.
In addition, creators of information have professional and institutional rights to full
attribution/credit for their products. In the current networked digital environment, highly
sensitive tools for reporting information use and impact are available; the best possible
technologies for measuring and reporting use/impact should be applied to return to
responsible creators of information or data, measures of impact of their work. Mechanisms
for reporting complex (secondary, tertiary, etc.) uses must also be developed. All such
mechanisms must, of course, pay full respect to legitimate concerns for privacy and
confidentiality.
Implementation Considerations
Creation of a Biodiversity Information Commons requires: (a) the establishment of processes
and mechanisms for identification, evaluation and selection of relevant data; (b) a thorough
understanding of international laws and conventions (e.g., Convention on Biological
Diversity7, World Intellectual Property Organization8) and relevant regional and national laws
and agreements, including intellectual property rights; and (c) the design and implementation
of a fully adequate technical environment for support and sustenance of such a commons.
What is to be done?
Proposed, as a solution, the creation of a Biodiversity Commons.
The international conservation community should:
Create a quot;Biodiversity Commonsquot; and policies for administration and governance.
o Such policies must be developed with full respect for the right of indigenous
peoples and of developing countries to control and benefit from their cultural
or national biological resources.
Clearly articulate and promote this model in all appropriate venues.
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5. Design and implement a sustainable Web-based Commons environment.
This design effort will include but not be limited to:
o Creating a quot;clearinghouse mechanismquot; to assist in the most efficient possible
clearance of rights for inclusion of all suitable legacy and prospective
information in the Commons.
o Identification or creation of mechanisms for optimal reporting on attribution,
use/impact of information. (Providing contributors of such information full
attribution and best possible reporting on use and impact of their
information.)
o Defining the best available skills, tool sets and methods for:
digitization and data capture (micro-processing) at the
institutional/organizational level, including the development of local
capacity (training, skills and tools) to digitally capture metadata and
full-text information.
dissemination of information (macro-processing) at the
network/Internet level, including design of a Web-based system of
protocols for donation of information and/or full documents (to a
centrally maintained repository) and for sustenance of a distributed
system of repositories. (The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) model
seems directly relevant to this effort.)
provision of assistance to contributors in acquisition and use of these
tools and methods.
For the Commons initiative to succeed, broad sectors of the conservation, research and
education community will need to participate and provide support. The long-term success of
the Biodiversity Commons initiative may determine not whether the South is ever quot;granted a
level playing fieldquot; but whether the South is — in a very practical way — allowed on the
field at all.
Notes
[1] Syed Haider Abbas Zaidi, quot;Higher Education Pakistan.quot;
<http://www2.unesco.org/wef/f_conf/000000e2.htm>.
[2] Boyle, James. The second enclosure movement and the construction of the public domain.
<http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/papers/boyle.pdf>.
[3] See for example: <http://www.scidev.net/dossiers/overview.asp?xc=A005
&dossiername=Intellectual%20Property>.
[4] Reichman, Jerome H. and Paul F. Uhlir, Promoting Public Good Uses of Scientific Data:
A Contractually Reconstructed Commons for Science and Innovation.
<http://www.law.duke.edu/pd/papers/ReichmanandUhlir.pdf>.
[5] Hardin, Garret. The tragedy of the commons. Science, New Series, Vol. 162, Issue 3859
(Dec. 13, 1968) 1243-1248.
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6. [6] The logo displays as: biodiversitycommons
[7] Convention on Biological Diversity <http://www.biodiv.org/>.
[8] World Intellectual Property Organization<http://www.wipo.org/>.
APPENDIX 1
Convention on Biological Diversity Articles 16, 17, 18
Convention on Biological Diversity
Article 16. Access to and Transfer of technology
1. Each Contracting Party, recognizing that technology includes
biotechnology, and that both access to and transfer of technology among
Contracting Parties are essential elements for the attainment of the
objectives of this Convention, undertakes subject to the provisions of this
Article to provide and/or facilitate access for and transfer to other
Contracting Parties of technologies that are relevant to the conservation and
sustainable use of biological diversity or make use of genetic resources and
do not cause significant damage to the environment.
2. Access to and transfer of technology referred to in paragraph 1 above to
developing countries shall be provided and/or facilitated under fair and most
favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms where
mutually agreed, and, where necessary, in accordance with the financial
mechanism established by Articles 20 and 21. In the case of technology
subject to patents and other intellectual property rights, such access and
transfer shall be provided on terms which recognize and are consistent with
the adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights. The
application of this paragraph shall be consistent with paragraphs 3, 4 and 5
below.
3. Each Contracting Party shall take legislative, administrative or policy
measures, as appropriate, with the aim that Contracting Parties, in particular
those that are developing countries, which provide genetic resources are
provided access to and transfer of technology which makes use of those
resources, on mutually agreed terms, including technology protected by
patents and other intellectual property rights, where necessary, through the
provisions of Articles 20 and 21 and in accordance with international law and
consistent with paragraphs 4 and 5 below.
4. Each Contracting Party shall take legislative, administrative or policy
measures, as appropriate, with the aim that the private sector facilitates
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7. access to, joint development and transfer of technology referred to in
paragraph 1 above for the benefit of both governmental institutions and the
private sector of developing countries and in this regard shall abide by the
obligations included in paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 above.
5. The Contracting Parties, recognizing that patents and other intellectual
property rights may have an influence on the implementation of this
Convention, shall cooperate in this regard subject to national legislation and
international law in order to ensure that such rights are supportive of and do
not run counter to its objectives.
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.
Convention on Biological Diversity
Article 18. Technical and Scientific Cooperation
1. The Contracting Parties shall promote international technical and scientific
cooperation in the field of conservation and sustainable use of biological
diversity, where necessary, through the appropriate international and
national institutions.
2. Each Contracting Party shall promote technical and scientific cooperation
with other Contracting Parties, in particular developing countries, in
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8. implementing this Convention, inter alia, through the development and
implementation of national policies. In promoting such cooperation, special
attention should be given to the development and strengthening of national
capabilities, by means of human resources development and institution
building.
3. The Conference of the Parties, at its first meeting, shall determine how to
establish a clearing-house mechanism to promote and facilitate technical and
scientific cooperation.
4. The Contracting Parties shall, in accordance with national legislation and
policies, encourage and develop methods of cooperation for the development
and use of technologies, including indigenous and traditional technologies, in
pursuance of the objectives of this Convention. For this purpose, the
Contracting Parties shall also promote cooperation in the training of
personnel and exchange of experts.
5. The Contracting Parties shall, subject to mutual agreement, promote the
establishment of joint research programmes and joint ventures for the
development of technologies relevant to the objectives of this Convention.
APPENDIX 2
Some Possible Working Definitions
quot;dataquot; - observations or measurements recorded and reported in a
standard way
quot;experiencequot; - personal or collective recollection and interpretation of
events
quot;informationquot; - reasoned associations of data and experience
quot;knowledgequot; - rational assumptions derived from the analysis of information
and experience , presumed to be quot;truequot; and quot;reliablequot;
Copyright 2002 Thomas Moritz
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