Science Commons

I have been talking about the Open Source Science Movement in a previous post, but I missed an important movement - Science Commons, it is a Creative Commons project for designing strategies and tools for faster and more efficient web-enabled scientific research.

Science Commons was launched with the goal of bringing the openness and sharing that have made Creative Commons licenses a success in the arts and cultural fields to the world of science. Science commons was housed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the movement started in the year 2005.

Science Commons has three interlocking initiatives designed to accelerate the research cycle — the continuous production and reuse of knowledge that is at the heart of the scientific method.

Making scientific research “re-useful” — We help people and organizations open and mark their research and data for reuse. Learn more.

Enabling “one-click” access to research materials — We help streamline the materials-transfer process so researchers can easily replicate, verify and extend research. Learn more.

Integrating fragmented information sources — We help researchers find, analyze and use data from disparate sources by marking and integrating the information with a common, computer-readable language. Learn more.

Science Commons Projects

Science Commons is currently working on three areas to clear legal and technical barriers to research.

• Opening and marking research and data for legal reuse — Scholar’s Copyright Project
• Facilitating the transfer of physical materials for verifying and extending research — Biological Materials Transfer Project
• Integrating/connecting research, data, materials and services from disparate sources, for permission-free access — NeuroCommons and Health Commons

In each project Science Commons follows the open source standards and approaches.

http://sciencecommons.org/ is the official website of Science Commons.

NB : Information and data courtesy Wikipedia & Science Commons.

Open Source Science

Science is for the good of society, the scientists must work together for the progress and prosperity of the world, but unfortunately the competition for intellectual property protection and for other reasons that is not happening in the real world. Sharing the ideas and Opening Scientific problems to a community of Experts will only help the problem or experiment to be solved or improved in one way or other.

I recently had a talk about this situation with one of my friend (1 degree of separation), he is working as a Biotechnology Scientist. So I told my opinion about the situation and He replied that the idea seems good, but he's not much sure if it will work or not. He also added that it will help students a lot.When I came back home, I Googled to know if there is any Open Source technologies available for that. To my surprise I stumbled on a site - OpenSourceScience.net

Open Source Science

Open Source model can help increased participation, rapid and innovative results. And the best thing is that unlike the normal research scenarios even laypeople can contribute to the design.

There are also certain amount of danger involved in making experiments Open Source,the possibility of Open Source Experiments used by unwanted people for dangerous purposes.

OpenSourceScience.net is a main Open Source Science initiative.The site says that it is a public space for managing controversial scientific experiments in a way that provides open access to all phases of the research. The site also provide a centralized resource for scientific collaboration, and help underwrite scientifically rigorous experiments that may contribute to an improved understanding of consciousness.

It seems like Open Source ideology is moving beyond it's normal scope. Let's all hope for a better world of free thinkers and Open Minded [:)] people.