Sites About Scientific Data

The AGORA program, set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA provides a collection of 918 journals to institutions in 107 countries. AGORA is designed to enhance the scholarship of the many thousands of students, faculty and researchers in agriculture and life sciences in the developing world.

The BioBricks Foundation (BBF) is a not-for-profit organization founded by engineers and scientists from MIT, Harvard, and UCSF with significant experience in both non-profit and commercial biotechnology research. BBF encourages the development and responsible use of technologies based on BioBrick(TM) standard DNA parts that encode basic biological functions.

The public domain is the realm of material—ideas, images, sounds, discoveries, facts, texts—that is unprotected by intellectual property rights and free for all to use or build upon. Our economy, culture and technology depend on a delicate balance between that which is, and is not, protected by exclusive intellectual property rights. Both the incentives provided by intellectual property and the freedom provided by the public domain are crucial to the balance. But most contemporary attention has gone to the realm of the protected. The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School is the first university center in the world devoted to the other side of the picture. Founded in September of 2002, as part of the school’s wider intellectual property program, its mission is to promote research and scholarship on the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science and innovation, to promote debate about the balance needed in our intellectual property system and to translate academic research into public policy solutions. The Center's Faculty Co-Directors are James Boyle, David Lange, Arti Rai and Jerome Reichman. Its Director is Jennifer Jenkins. The Center is supported in its operation by a generous founding gift and by grants from Foundations.

These papers are meant to provide participants with context and to serve as "discusion starters" for the Commons of Science Conference (October 3-4, 2006, Washington, D.C.).

CAMBIA’s Patent Lens is an independent, public good global resource for increasing patent transparency, providing knowledge of the patent world and analysing critical patent thickets that have developed in the life sciences. Full text searching, fee-free and fast. Our database of about 6 million documents includes patents and patent applications from the PCT, US, and European patent offices, along with ready access to patent status information submitted to the EPO by over 60 countries.

Science Commons serves the advancement of science by removing unnecessary legal and technical barriers to scientific collaboration and innovation. Built on the promise of Open Access to scholarly literature and data, Science Commons identifies and eases key barriers to the movement of information, tools and data through the scientific research cycle. Our long term vision is to provide more than just useful contracts. We will combine our publishing, data, and licensing approaches to develop solutions for a truly integrated and streamlined research process.

Scholarly articles on open access to scientific data and techonology transfer posted by Science Commons.

A diverse and growing alliance of organizations representing taxpayers, patients, physicians, researchers, and institutions that support open public access to taxpayer-funded research.

UAEM works with student and faculty groups across the US, Europe and Canada. We assemble teams of experts in matters of intellectual property, technology transfer, pharmaceutical R&D, and healthcare delivery in resource-poor settings, in order to construct creative new approaches to improving the development and delivery of public health goods. Using this approach, UAEM has constructed model licensing terms and policy documents that universities can use to improve global public health, and is currently working on crafting novel metrics for university technology transfer. This website provides details on some of these projects.