The site explains why Open Access publishing is beneficial to academic researchers, teachers and students, and how to find appropriate avenues for publishing your academic work.

The project was developed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and is supported by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). These are all USA-based organisations.

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.

When you participate in such online communities, you give up some of your right to privacy and some aspects of control over the intellectual property you create in that environment. In return, the service provider makes money by selling advertising or other spin-off goods and services that are targeted to fit (their idea of) your particular interests and desires. Somebody’s making money from this deal, and it probably is not you.

So why do we cheerfully hand over our private information? Fister observes:

“Here’s the interesting paradox: The only way to increase the intellectual property value of your identity is to give it away. That’s the only way it can be shared, linked to and recognized by others. Trading a little personal information for a public platform, whether for personal expression or self-promotion (or both), seems a fair exchange.”

Fister draws a parallel with the Open Access movement, which seeks to make academic publications (journal articles, books etc) freely available online.

The “privately owned digital public sphere is a fertile if febrile commons where millions of people play out their identities and share ideas… Scholars and librarians champion the value of free and open exchange of ideas for the public good. It’s time to take those values beyond the academy. If we made an effort to help the public understand the tradeoffs we make to be part of the digital social sphere, maybe we’d all think more critically about how our public identities are formed and exploited – for what they are worth.”

The award recognises “significant and influential contributions to the development of computer-mediated communications and to the empowerment of individuals in using computers and the Internet.”

Michael was a keynote speaker at the VALA 2008 conference in Melbourne earlier this month.

We at the Information Futures Commission were delighted to welcome Michael to the Melbourne University campus, where he delivered the second Information Futures Forum lecture for 2008 — a video of Michael’s presentation is available online.

Missed the forums? No worries — you can ‘attend’ online instead. Videos of both the forums are now available on the Information Futures Commission’s main web site.

We started the forum series with Richard Katz, Vice-President of EDUCAUSE. Richard explored the disruptive effects of information and communication technologies on higher education — from how we communicate routinely with colleagues to questioning the fundamental notion of ‘the university.’

The second Information Futures Forum was presented by Professor Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa. Michael is a leading advocate of providing open access to scholarly information, and an expert on copyright law. I could not attend Michael Geist’s lecture, Unlocking Access – the case for Open Access publishing, so I’m looking forward to hearing what he had to say.

Huge thanks to Jon Peacocke, Ian Shiel,  Ben Loveridge and the rest of the Digital Media Services team for their fabulous video recording and production work.