Benefits of Developing Countries Access to the Scientific Public Domain:

1
Benefits of Developing Countries Access to the
Scientific Public Domain

• Clemente Forero-Pineda
• Universidad de los Andes, Universidad del Rosario
• Abelardo Duarte-Rey
• Universidad de los Andes
• Bogota, Colombia

2
The D0 Collaboration (Fermilab)

• Countries participating in D0
• Argentina
• Brazil
• China
• Colombia
• Tchecoeslovaquia
• Ecuador
• France
• Germany
• India
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• Russia
• United Kingdom
• United States

• Among achievements
• Discovered the top quark
• Since 1991
• The cost of basic journals necessary to
  participate in collaboration
• US 50.000
• Research groups in countries checked would not be
  able to incur this cost.
• They are able to be in D0, thru the public domain
  Internet site xxx.lanl.gov (Los Alamos), where
  all particle physicists pre-publish their papers.

3
Example 2 Papiloma Virus uterus cancer

• Achievement proved relationship between virus of
  papiloma and uterus cancer.
• Benin Mali Algeria Thailand Brazil Panama Canada
  France Tanzania Guinea Bissau Philipines Spain
  Bolivia Indonesia Germany Colombia Argentina
  Paraguay Cuba Chile Uganda Poland Australia Spain
  USA England .

• Institutions in industrialized countries assumed
  responsibility for all information within the
  project.

4
Example 3 Alzheimer gene

• Achievement discovered that gene mutation
  predicts Alzheimer.
• Colombia (8 researchers), USA (5), Japan(2).

• Had access to books and articles through their
  peers, but not to databases, because of
  restrictions.

5
Networking, cooperation and the value of
information 1(important, because access to info
is critical for participation)

• Putting information into the hands of a more
  diverse population of researchers (David and
  Foray 1995)
• cooperation in research processes where partial
  results add-up towards a common scientific
  goal.
• wider set of peers capable of reviewing
  publications or validating experiments in diverse
  environments.

• potential of questioning theory and paradigms
  from the vantage point of more diverse
  experimentation environments.
• Research about research some projects demand
  large number of cases and diversity of
  environments for meta-analysis. Despite
  controversy, evidence-based medicine (Oxman et
  al. 1993) is one example.

6
Networking, cooperation and the value of
information 2

• Sharing funding and execution of big-science
  projects, especially when these projects need
  locations in different geographical scenarios
• global warming,
• Antarctica,
• particle capturing at equatorial latitude.

• Adressing a wider range of problems, not among
  priorities of developed countries.
• Malaria illustrates that priorities of larger
  scientific communities (and expenditures of
  financing agencies) may be skewed against the
  solution of problems of tropical countries.
• This bias may be offset by financial and
  scientific efforts from developing countries.

7
Two sides of the economic analysis of a
regulation of intellectual property

• The Distribution of Benefits

• The Size of Overall Benefits

We will compare intellectual property (monopoly
for the commercial exploitation) with public
domain institutions to regulate exchange of
information useful in research.
8
Size and distribution of benefits

• Benefits
• Costs

Spill
UserBm
Profitsm
Subsidy
Projects ranked by unit-benefits
9
Under Public Domain

• Public financing of production of information is
  necessary (Governments, donations or community
  resources).
• When social benefits are considerably larger than
  private benefits, public domain is worthwhile
  (characteristic of information goods).
• Under a regime of public domain, users of
  information take all the benefits. Under IPR,
  benefits are shared between producer and user of
  information.

10
Besides, there are transaction costs

• Under monopoly (IPR), the social costs of running
  a protection system (justice).
• Under public domain, the costs of giving
  incentives to producers of that information.
• Other benefits of public domain
• As research is risky, if scientists have to pay
  for the information, they are prone not to buy
  it. Valuing information and deciding whether to
  buy it or not is difficult, because he does not
  know its true value. This reduces research below
  the social optimum.
• Under public domain, there is no economic risk
  for the scientist associated with the access to
  information.
• When social benefits are larger than private
  benefits, the signals emitted by the price system
  are not reliable.

11
An extreme case of the public domain cheap-talk

• In the analyses of Silicon Valley, it was
  observed that companies encouraged their
  employees to share secrets with competition.
• Even in industry, opening access to databases is
  common practice
• Celera/Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project (used
  to validate gene sequencing methods Maurer
  2002).
• Ensembl database.
• Mercks strategy against short-snippet
  patenting of human genetic code by too many small
  firms. Made public database
• Sometimes, firms publish in journals. (Coffman et
  al.).
• In all these cases, beyond a social value of the
  public domain, a private value to the producer of
  databases is detected. (The owner of the
  information can appropriate the benefits from the
  access of others to this information).

12
Institutional analysis

• Often, the economic optimum is not attainable,
  and participants do not have incentives to
  cooperate in sharing the information, though
  social benefits of cooperation are large. (Many
  examples have been given in this workshop).
• Perhaps there is a cultural element, but
  institutional and incentive reasons ought to be
  addressed.
• In most cases, there are no individual incentives
  for sharing data (e.g., absence of data journals).

13
Institutional obstacles for sharing data

• Two reward systems coexist side-by-side
  (Dasgupta, David)
• the reward system of science, where the rule of
  priority is central.
• The market system, where profit is the reward.
• The neighborhood of the market (the potential for
  commercializing knowledge) is in part responsible
  for mistrust in scientific exchange.
• This neighborhood is increasingly closer.
• International exchanges of information are
  particularly prone to the failure to create
  scientific commons.
• No enforcement authority for the international
  exchange of information exists in general.
• As a consequence

14
Data-release strategies in science

• The suspicion that agreements will not be
  honoured is harmful.
• When the science commons fail, because of a
  lack of incentives, scientists develop strategies
  for the partial disclosure of data.
• Strategies to dosify or sequence the
  disclosure of information are used.
• Planned obsolescence of data is practised.
• Conditioned and limited use of information.
• Scientists producing information become eager to
  learn about these strategies.
• Social benefits of the creation of knowledge
  decrease.
• Developing countries are particularly affected.

15
Size and distribution of benefits

• Benefits
• Costs

Spill
UserBm
Profitsm
Projects ranked by unit-benefits
16
International agreements

• Biodiversity is an area where all these problems
  show.
• Some countries are net providers of biodiversity
  information, others are net users. Two ways
  around
• Information-exchange negotiations across
  different areas.
• Collaboration projects.
• The commercial value of one countrys
  biodiversity depends on the bio-diversity
  agreements of its neighbours.
• As a consequence of these science-commons
  failures, very few biodiversity or ethnic
  knowledge agreeements have become operative.

17
Conclusion

• Not all failures to exchange information can be
  blamed on the culture of scientists.
• These are by enlarge originated in
• Formal and informal scientific institutions.
• The close neighborhood of the market.
• The lack of incentives to share or publish data.