Partial Support for a Symposium on the Role of the Public Domain in Scientific and Technical Information

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The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will convene a symposium to address the role that the public domain plays now and may play in the future in both promoting and protecting the exchange of scientific data and information. The symposium will bring together 150 experts on scientific data and information; professionals experienced in management of such data and information; and scientists, from both the public and private sector. The symposium will evaluate the present role that the public domain plays in support of science, including research, and education; identify and quantify the various pressures on the public domain; discuss existing and prospective approaches for preserving the public domain in the face of such pressures; identify issues in these areas that may warrant further study; and recommend ways in which such issues might be addressed most effectively. Increasing legal, economic and technological pressures threaten to reduce the flow of scientific data and information to the public domain and thus constrain the ability of research scientists to draw data and information from the public domain and utilize it in their research. Scientific data and information in the public domain has been and remains essential to the conduct of scientific research. Similarly, the release into the public domain of data and information generated in the course of such scientific research also is essential to evaluation, verification and criticism of the results of such research. The proceedings of the symposium will be made available in both electronic and hard copy formats within twelve months of the symposium.