Workshop on Research and Resource Commons in Scientific Research

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A research or resource commons requires agreement among providers or participants about its legal structure, the technical requirements for common resources, and a shared understanding about how to sustain the commons. Legal issues, usually involving intellectual property or contract law, often arise as researchers, or research funders, seek to build commons or commons-based tools, such as Creative Commons licenses. There are three major objectives for the workshop to be held at American University. First, the attendees will review lessons learned from those who have worked to build or to promote the use of commons structures to support scientific research from within the federal government and from the private sector, including the non-profit sector. Next, the members will identify the legal, technical, and cultural requirements for a successful commons, with a particular focus on scientific data. The key themes will be the respective roles of standardization and interoperability at the legal and technical levels necessary for resources to be shared in a commons, whether those resources are literature, data, physical inputs, or others. Third, they will discuss how the federal government, the university and non-profit sector, and industry can best work together to support existing successful resource commons in science and to create new commons or commons-based tools to improve the speed and efficiency of publicly funded scientific research. Attention will be given to how existing commons standards, such as legal and technical tools supplied by Creative Commons, are currently being used in the sciences and how these might be made more useful with respect to emergent forms of scientific communication. The report of the workshop and all case studies developed will be made publicly available and published on the Internet.