Knowledge Commons (2019)

Routledge Handbook of the Study of the Commons, 2019

This chapter provides an introduction to and overview of the knowledge commons research framework. Knowledge commons refers to an institutional approach (commons) to governing the production, use, management, and/or preservation of a particular type of resource (knowledge). The research framework supplies a template for interrogating the details of knowledge commons institutions on a case study basis, generating qualitative data that may be used to support comparative analysis.

“Knowledge commons” describes the institutionalized community governance of the sharing and, in some cases, creation, of information, science, knowledge, data, and other types of intellectual and cultural resources. It is the subject of enormous recent interest and enthusiasm with respect to policymaking about innovation, creative production, and intellectual property. Taking that enthusiasm as its starting point, Governing Knowledge Commons argues that policymaking should be based on evidence and a deeper understanding of what makes commons institutions work. It offers a systematic way to study knowledge commons, borrowing and building on Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning research on natural resource commons. It proposes a framework for studying knowledge commons that is adapted to the unique attributes of knowledge and information, describing the framework in detail and explaining how to put it into context both with respect to commons research and with respect to innovation and information policy. Eleven detailed case studies apply and discuss the framework exploring knowledge commons across a wide variety of scientific and cultural domains.

2017

How, where, and why do innovation and creativity occur? What influences the design and development of productive and sustainable knowledge production and preservation institutions? And what lessons, if any, should public policy and law derive from answers to these questions? These are the macro questions that inform empirical research on knowledge commons, including the 15 case studies gathered in Governing Medical Knowledge Commons and the 11 case studies published in 2014 in Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC). Knowledge commons governance is one strategy for overcoming social dilemmas regarding the production, stewardship, preservation, distribution of, access to, and consumption and other use and re-use of knowledge and information resources. That strategy may often be as important and powerful as strategies grounded in law and related public policy, including intellectual property law, competition law, communications law, and security and privacy law. For its potential to be realized, "knowledge commons" should be more than a rallying cry for the public domain or a piece of rhetoric deployed in political battles about access to knowledge and information. Empirical investigation, of the sort reported in this book, is a critical prerequisite for sound knowledge commons policy. The social dilemmas encountered in deploying knowledge commons governance are extremely diverse. Moreover, knowledge commons governance is intertwined, in varied and context-specific ways, with publicly enacted law and other government initiatives. As a result, empirical research must be modest. The world of knowledge commons governance is too diverse, both today and in historical context, to permit

2017

Cole offers encouragement and caution to scholars seeking to use Ostrom's work as a starting point for studying knowledge commons. He encourages those seeking "conceptual, analytical, and methodological guidance, " arguing that Ostrom's work can provide a foundation for "improv[ing] understanding of information and information flows under alternative institutional arrangements, " "diagnos[ing] problems in existing institutional arrangements, " and even "predict[ing] outcomes under alternative institutional arrangements." He cautions, however, that those looking to Ostrom's work for normative guidance as to the proper structure of intellectual property law are "bound to be disappointed (or dishonest)" for two reasons: First, Ostrom's work teaches that there are "no panaceas." Second, researchers necessarily choose metrics for assessing commons outcomes. Whereas long-run sustainability is a widely accepted goal for natural resource commons, Cole suggests that outcome metrics for knowledge commons are likely to be much more contested. In Chapter 3, Yochai Benkler provides a conceptual map for understanding the range of different types of commons that are important to society and deserve systematic study. He argues that there are important differences between the institutional arrangements studied by Ostrom and colleagues, in which a "defined set of claimants" share resources in a self-governing arrangement, and public domain or open access commons, which provide "freedom-to-operate under symmetric constraints, available to an open, or undefined, class of users." Benkler reminds us that knowledge commons arrangements are layered on top of and dependent upon substantial resource sets governed either as public domain commons or through private property arrangements. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 apply the knowledge commons research framework to commons arrangements for scientific research, where tradition and custom teach that formal intellectual property rights are particularly unlikely to play key roles in institutional governance, but where the knowledge commons research framework nonetheless reveals meaningful structure and governance of knowledge sharing. In Chapter 4, Jorge Contreras targets the genomics research collaborative that constituted the Human Genome Project. Geertrui Van Overwalle follows that chapter with a comment that notes the global context of research on genomic commons, illustrating that commons in general have important international and comparative dimensions. In Chapter 5, Katherine Strandburg, Brett Frischmann, and Can Cui delve into a network of medical researchers and patient advocacy groups titled the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network, and the related Urea Cycle Disorders Consortium. In Chapter 6, Michael Madison describes a citizen science project, called Galaxy Zoo, that pairs professional astronomers with amateurs. Chapters 7 and 8 involve commons cases situated in the context of information and communications technologies (sometimes abbreviated ICTs). In Chapter 7, Charles Schweik presents the results of a comparative analysis of open source software development communities. In Chapter 8, Mayo Fuster Morell reports a study of online creation communities (OCCs) such as the photosharing site, Flickr, used for sharing creative content supplied by individuals.

2014

Cole offers encouragement and caution to scholars seeking to use Ostrom's work as a starting point for studying knowledge commons. He encourages those seeking "conceptual, analytical, and methodological guidance, " arguing that Ostrom's work can provide a foundation for "improv[ing] understanding of information and information flows under alternative institutional arrangements, " "diagnos[ing] problems in existing institutional arrangements, " and even "predict[ing] outcomes under alternative institutional arrangements." He cautions, however, that those looking to Ostrom's work for normative guidance as to the proper structure of intellectual property law are "bound to be disappointed (or dishonest)" for two reasons: First, Ostrom's work teaches that there are "no panaceas." Second, researchers necessarily choose metrics for assessing commons outcomes. Whereas long-run sustainability is a widely accepted goal for natural resource commons, Cole suggests that outcome metrics for knowledge commons are likely to be much more contested. In Chapter 3, Yochai Benkler provides a conceptual map for understanding the range of different types of commons that are important to society and deserve systematic study. He argues that there are important differences between the institutional arrangements studied by Ostrom and colleagues, in which a "defined set of claimants" share resources in a self-governing arrangement, and public domain or open access commons, which provide "freedom-to-operate under symmetric constraints, available to an open, or undefined, class of users." Benkler reminds us that knowledge commons arrangements are layered on top of and dependent upon substantial resource sets governed either as public domain commons or through private property arrangements. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 apply the knowledge commons research framework to commons arrangements for scientific research, where tradition and custom teach that formal intellectual property rights are particularly unlikely to play key roles in institutional governance, but where the knowledge commons research framework nonetheless reveals meaningful structure and governance of knowledge sharing. In Chapter 4, Jorge Contreras targets the genomics research collaborative that constituted the Human Genome Project. Geertrui Van Overwalle follows that chapter with a comment that notes the global context of research on genomic commons, illustrating that commons in general have important international and comparative dimensions. In Chapter 5, Katherine Strandburg, Brett Frischmann, and Can Cui delve into a network of medical researchers and patient advocacy groups titled the Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network, and the related Urea Cycle Disorders Consortium. In Chapter 6, Michael Madison describes a citizen science project, called Galaxy Zoo, that pairs professional astronomers with amateurs. Chapters 7 and 8 involve commons cases situated in the context of information and communications technologies (sometimes abbreviated ICTs). In Chapter 7, Charles Schweik presents the results of a comparative analysis of open source software development communities. In Chapter 8, Mayo Fuster Morell reports a study of online creation communities (OCCs) such as the photosharing site, Flickr, used for sharing creative content supplied by individuals.