Introduction

Innovation in the life sciences depends on how much information is produced as well as how widely and easily it is shared. As shown by the contributions in this volume, policies governing the science commons – or alternative, more restricted information spaces – determine how widely and quickly information and research tools are distributed. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight why the science commons matters, and to analyse its organization. The concern for the governance of the science commons has caught the attention of a wide range of scholars in the mid 1990s, especially in legal scholarship. The interest of these scholars is in the cooperative use of scientific data, information, materials and research tools that actually are not in the public domain, and whose licensed use is legally protected by an intellectual property (IP) regime. In its more general meaning however, the “commons” designates any resource shared by a group of people that is subject to problems of underprovision or overconsumption of the shared resource, independently of its legal nature. From this general perspective, the scientific research commons, which we will call hereafter shortly the science commons, designates the scientific data, information and materials which are shared under conditions of non-exclusive use (though perhaps limited in its extent or use, depending on the collective agreements) within limited or global research communities.