Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

commons-research - Re: [Commons-research] Culture and Science

commons-research AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Commons-research mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Victoria Stodden <vcs AT stanford.edu>
  • To: Ben Bildstein <ben.bildstein AT student.unsw.edu.au>, <commons-research AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Commons-research] Culture and Science
  • Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 19:16:37 -0400

Title: Re: [Commons-research] Culture and Science
Sure. There isn’t an existing license that covers all the components of a computational scientist’s research product: the code, the figures, the papers, the data structures... everything that is necessary for another scientist to reproduce his or her work. Creative Commons licenses are intended for media, where the GPL family is really for code.

I proposed a hybrid of these two types of licenses for the computational research product – so all components are covered, and the scientist is encouraged to release every component of their research. The license is virally attributive: ensuring both that scientists get citation credit for work they have done and thereby encouraging them to release all their work (as opposed to only the final paper, which is the common mode of knowledge transfer today). I don’t incorporate the ShareAlike provision common to the Creative Commons licenses – when the output is further scientific discovery a restriction like ShareAlike is unnecessary, as it is more important for the scientist to attribute the component of the work correctly (respecting the licensed upstream work), than to have the entire compendium of a downstream researcher’s fall work under the license. Ideally they will choose to apply the license to their work, but it is important there are no bars to building on another scientist’s research.

Victoria

On 5/13/08 7:04 PM, "Ben Bildstein" <ben.bildstein AT student.unsw.edu.au> wrote:

Hi Victoria,

Firstly, don't take anything I say as having authority in any sense. Secondly, I hope you'll forgive me for playing devil's advocate.

I guess a new licence won't be successful unless it's clear why the existing licences aren't sufficient. That is, it's not enough to have a well crafted license that does exactly what it needs to. Do you think you could explain briefly what it is about existing licences that is lacking when it comes to use in computational science?

Thanks,

Ben.

e: ben.bildstein AT student.unsw.edu.au
b: http://cyberlawcentre.org/hoc
m: 0408 134466

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 2:26 AM, Victoria Stodden <vcs AT stanford.edu> wrote:
Dear Folks,

I have made a submission to the iCommons research track and I was hoping to
bounce my idea off you for comment.

When I was at Stanford Law School last fall, I worked on an idea for a
research license for computational scientists - more and more of this type
of research is being done collaboratively on the web and this information
falls under copyright law by default. Copyright was created to prevent the
copying and dissemination of works such as performance art, literary work,
etc. Not for science. The scientific ethos is to encourage as much
"derivative work" (a.k.a. new scientific discoveries) by others as possible.
Many scientists are unaware of this fact and I believe a license rescinding
many of their copyright rights, in creative commons style, would greatly
facilitate scientific collaboration and advancement.

I have not yet published the licensing idea and I would love to present it
and receive critical comment. My belief is that our culture is shaped deeply
by scientific discoveries and how scientific research is promulgated is an
important topic to discuss.

I'm interested in your thoughts and happy to provide further details as
people would like.

Sincerely,
Victoria



_______________________________________________
Commons-research mailing list
Commons-research AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-research






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page