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Creative Commons For Science
chrisspurgeon writes "The folks at Creative Commons are rolling out a new project aimed at improving the dissemination of scientific publications and data. The National Institutes of Health is already proposing mandated Open Access to all NIH-funded research, and many scientists welcome the free redistribution of their papers, they just don't know the legal details of how to do it. The Science Commons project will take on the copyright problems unique to scientists (things like pre and post prints, and electronic vs. paper journal distribution)."
All reputable scientific journals have a peer review system wherin the research to be published must first be scrutinized by other experts in the field. I don't see why free access to research publications would change this.
Yes, we will. Truthfully some of our work is government funded but it's already well partitioned to begin with. I don't see how any of this can be a bad thing for either big pharma or the creative commons, science edition.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
So many of you seem to be saying "Grants don't allow companies sell the technology" or "A business should not profit from public money".
But let me share something with you..
There is a program called SBIR (Small Business Inovation Research). In which small businesses ( under 500 employees) can submit for grants for very (typically) very specific "problems" the various federal agencies want to have solved. With an end result being commercialization of your product/technology.
It goes like this..
1. Feds put out a list of solicitations
2. You submit a paper describing your idea and how commercially viable it is
3. You may or may not get "Phase I" funding for research.
4. Now, if you did well in Phase I you can submit for "Phase II" funding. Which gives you more money. This step is primarily to help get your product into the market. So you better have a good set of sales numbers ready.
Sometimes the "product" is something that the Feds will want to buy from you (e.g. NASA, US Army, etc..) and other times it will have civilian application. So if you want it to have civilian application, you can work on that too with the grant money.
And in regards to IP, you retain exclusive rights to ALL work you have done. And the US Govt. also has right to the technology, but not to sell it, just to use/improve/rework it.
This is not free money, you do need other sources of capital in order to progress in the funding. They aren't giving out free money without you doing some work and showing you can generate outside interest.
The point of the program is to grow the US economy and also to provide the US Govt. with R&D for technology it finds it has a need for.
There are many details that I have just glossed over. But you can find out more here.
There is a national conference twice a year to learn more about the program. You can find out about that by going here.
It has a sister-program called STTR which allows you to work with a university and use their labs and staff. You can learn about both at the conference, I find them quite informative.