[sc-announce] "The 'sharing principle' for biological materials" - Science Commons blog

Kaitlin Thaney kaitlin at creativecommons.org
Fri Jun 12 13:41:27 EDT 2009


The ’sharing principle’ for biological materials

June 12th, 2009<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2009/06/12/sharing-principle-biological-materials/>by
Kaitlin Thaney

A new editorial on the sharing of biological materials, specifically lab
mice, is now available<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/459752a.html>in
*Nature* <http://www.nature.com/>. The editorial “The sharing
principle”<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/459752a.html>addresses
the conclusion of a recent workshop in Rome hosted by
CASIMIR <http://www.casimir.org.uk/fullstory.php?storyid=64> - a EU project
working to “coordinate and sustain mouse resources internationally.”

The May meeting focused on sharing scientific knowledge - in this case mouse
lines and resources, a tacit form of knowledge critical to the scientific
research cycle. Our legal counsel, Thinh
Nguyen<http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/nguyen/>joined the
event, presenting our position on data sharing for genetic mouse
material and our Materials Transfer
work<http://sciencecommons.org/projects/licensing/>.
The event brought together a wide array of participants, from various
continents and organizations (funding agencies, academics, publishers, mouse
repositories, etc.)

Their conclusion - the sharing problem needs to be addressed immediately if
we are to make use of the genomic output and data, increasing exponentially
as efforts become more coordinated, technology advances, and the process
becomes cheaper and more efficient.

This should start with the journals and funding agencies, the author posits,
by putting in place stricter policies requiring authors as a condition of
publication / funding to make mice available in a public repository, or at
the very least, freely available to other labs.

The facilities, coordination and technology all exist to make this happen.
Our Materials Transfer work plays a part in this, allowing for those
materials to be tagged, discovered and seamlessly transfered using standard,
modular contracts that help clear up some of the clutter in the technology
transfer system. All with the same goal in mind - to further lower the
barrier and transaction cost to transferring scientific materials. All it
takes are users willing to share.

For more information about our Materials Transfer work, visit its project
page <http://sciencecommons.org/projects/licensing/>, where you can read the
background on this, access the MTA
chooser<http://mta.sciencecommons.org/chooser>,
and view the latest video.
--
http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2009/06/12/sharing-principle-biological-materials/

--------------------------------------
Kaitlin Thaney
Program Manager
Science Commons, a project of Creative Commons
http://sciencecommons.org
http://creativecommons.org
kaitlin at creativecommons.org
--------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/sc-announce/attachments/20090612/f13be1e7/attachment.htm 


More information about the sc-announce mailing list