Instead of selling their elegant innovation to a pharmaceutical company, they have published their method in an Open Access refereed journal called “Public Library of Science: Neglected Tropical Diseases.” Articles in this journal have a Creative Commons licence that allows free downloading, adaptation and sharing of their content provided the authors receive attribution.

Here is the paper:

• Njiru ZK, Mikosza ASJ, Armstrong T, Enyaru JC, Ndung’u JM, et al. (2008) Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) Method for Rapid Detection of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 2(2): e147.

See also:

• Simarro PP, Jannin J, Cattand P (2008) Eliminating Human African Trypanosomiasis: Where Do We Stand and What Comes Next. PLoS Med 5(2): e55 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050055

In the Murdoch case, the ‘public good’ factor is a clear winner in the debate over whether to provide open access to a university’s research output: people in poor and developing countries need low-cost medical and health care, particularly for endemic diseases that don’t occur as widely in developed countries (trypanosomiasis is one; malaria is another). Publishing this particular research in a free, Open Access journal helps to remove economic barriers from potential users of the new technique (assuming that the researchers have not patented the technique itself).

Is the public good a sufficient reason for a university to release all of its innovations for general usage?

Should we seek to earn income from the inventions of our staff?

What about the inventions of students? (Sun Microsystems and the Google search engine both started as graduate student projects.)

In an era when universities are using multiple income streams to offset declining government/public funding, how do we decide when to commercialise and when to donate our intellectual products?

Note: This post was originally published on 6 March, then revised on 11 March. Thanks to Stephen Young for his off-line comments about the original version. As I understand it, Stephen was keen to draw a distinction between the copyright on the research paper and the ownership of intellectual property in the laboratory technique described in that paper. The copyright is covered by the Creative Commons licence; regardless of copyright in the paper, it may still be possible to patent the intellectual property.

Answer: A number of people have asked why we don’t just put out there what we think the answer is and invite comment? We have always had in mind that we shouldn’t approach this process with a pre-conceived vision. Discussions so far with a range of stakeholder highlight the wide range of possible future visions. We need to get the questions and background out there for discussion by you, our community.

So – the Consultation Paper to be released at the end of February will outline some of the big issues and ask the university community to start engaging with them. Following this there will be more papers that provide background in specific areas, Academic Board and other committee discussions, guest speakers at Information Futures and other public discussion forums, and of course the opportunity for everyone to contribute via the blog.

Please get involved! Only through engagement with our community will we arrive at a strategy that is bold and realistic in taking the University forward.

Question: Are we going to look at the great things that the academic community is already doing in order to move our vision forward?

Answer: “Yes…but”. The answer is that of course we will be intensely interested in what is going on and will be interviewing a range of those doing innovative things in the creation, dissemination, access, preservation, and curation of scholarly information. If you have innovative things you’re doing please let us know or (even better) put them on the blog so that everyone can hear about them.

The “but” is that we are also attempting to look 10 years ahead and will need to ensure that we don’t constrain ourselves to the what is out there now – no matter how innovative.