Should Data Collected For Academic Research Get Intellectual Property Protection?

from the the-big-questions dept

Tue, Jan 19th 2010 6:00pm — Mike Masnick

Michael Scott points us to a blog post by a political science professor, Jeff Yates, who in a previous life had been a lawyer. In the blog post, he discusses the social norm within academic circles of freely sharing data used in research, and wonders if there shouldn't be some sort of intellectual property protection on the data. He isn't claiming that there definitely should be -- he's just exploring the topic, and questioning whether or not it makes sense.

Of course, as many proponents of open research and open education systems will tell you, it's difficult to see why such data should get any sort of protection or how that actually helps towards the goal of the pursuit of knowledge. Countless studies have shown that having more folks examine and analyze the data is a much better way of speeding up the process of getting to more interesting findings. Slowing down that process seems quite counterproductive to everyone involved. If some of the issue is that it's "unfair" for others to do research on data they did not collect, that can and should be mitigated by giving credit where credit is due. In academic circles, citations and giving credit is a lot more standard (and respected). It doesn't always work, but it certainly can mitigate any "downside" to sharing data. If someone else makes a giant breakthrough with the data you collected, there's no reason the original data collector can't use that fact to his or her advantage -- especially in getting future grants or publicity.

The other claim, of course, would be that without such protectionism, there is less incentive to collect that data. On that subject, we actually have quite a bit of empirical data that suggests this claim is simply incorrect. The US does not have database rights, while Europe does (such rights are loosely similar to what is being asked for here -- providing some sort of protectionism for "sweat of the brow" collection of data, rather than any creativity put on top of it), and yet when you compare similar database industries in the US to Europe you quickly discover that they're much bigger in the US than in Europe.

The reasoning makes sense, once you think it through. Because the data are not locked down and can be used in many more ways, the data become a lot more valuable, and open up many more opportunities for lots of companies to benefit. That leads to more experimentation and more innovation... and greater demand for the data itself. From that there are plenty of incentives to make sure the collection of the data is continually enhanced, because it benefits so many people downstream (in economic terms, it's an example of the Coase Theorem at work).

Now, while the economic setup in the academic world may seem to be slightly different (researchers aren't necessarily trying to maximize revenue), the overall incentive structure remains effectively the same (and money is still a part of it all). Freeing up your data so that more people can analyze it increases the overall value of the data and is more likely to lead to additional breakthroughs or interesting findings from that data. In turn, that can lead back to more interest for the original data collector and more opportunities to do more or to be involved in more relevant projects. Locking up the data, on the other hand, takes away many of those incentives for no clear benefit.

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Filed Under: academic research, copyright, intellectual property

19 Comments

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joseph franklin (profile), 19 Jan 2010 @ 6:24pm

The idea that "analysis" would be published without making the raw data available for scrutiny seems like a joke on the gullible reader. See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
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Andrew F (profile), 19 Jan 2010 @ 6:48pm

Relative Scarcity
What's harder to find -- good data or good researchers willing to go over that data? If it's the latter, in-demand researchers may have better things to do with their time than try to negotiate a price for locked up or otherwise restricted data.

It'd be very similar to how obscurity is a bigger threat to musicians than copying.
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- Andrew F (profile), 19 Jan 2010 @ 7:06pm
  
  Re: Relative Scarcity
  As a corollary, researchers seem to be engaged in a big popularity contest. Your primary source of income is grant money from institutions and the government. The way you get more money is to increase your credibility. The way you increase your credibility is to get more citations. And you get more citations by freeing up your data.
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:), 19 Jan 2010 @ 6:50pm

No.
Protection from a lawyers means barriers.

It can really slow down progress and the speed of analysis of anything.

But I'm biased as I use databases to construct things.

Like I'm using data from Free Maps to recreate scenarios from ancient china and some other illustrations for the "The Art of War"(I'm using Quantum GIS too that is a GUI for GRASS)

Or like some guy used the dataset from medical research to do a realtime manipulation of that data using Blender for navigating the human body.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yn-D5LnQjI.

I wouldn't be fooling around with paid datasets(that are gigabytes in size) and probably many others would stop using those too and it would force people to create their own datasets like openstreetmaps, crime maps, cellphone tower maps, TV shows listings and more.

I think that in an age where crowdsourcing is real, datasets protections is just foolish and offers even less incentive to do something like that.
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:), 19 Jan 2010 @ 6:59pm

Bad unintended consequences.
Just hit me that if data is protected it could hinder third party verification of data.

For companies that would be a boom. If anyone use their own data to expose any wrong doing they could sue anyone.
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transmaster (profile), 19 Jan 2010 @ 7:03pm

Only a researcher like the climategate clown would want something like this. If you don't make the data available so other scientists who are doing the same research so they can validate and use this date to help them in their work it is crap.
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cc, 19 Jan 2010 @ 7:05pm

In my field, datasets are usually used to train and test algorithms. If the datasets are not freely available, then there is no easy way for research teams around the world to compare the performance of their algorithms.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2010 @ 7:13pm

"Should Data Collected For Academic Research Get Intellectual Property Protection?"

No, because the public should get double scammed. They should get scammed once by paying for the research through their tax dollars and then they should get scammed again when they have to pay for access to the very research they already funded through their tax dollars. That's how it should work.
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Just the Facts Ma'am, 19 Jan 2010 @ 7:36pm

wtf
1. data are facts
2. facts can not be subjected to copyright, patent or trademark
3. seems cut and dried
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- chris (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 5:57am
  
  Re: wtf
  3. seems cut and dried
  
  there is a lot of legal wrangling over databases. companies like lexisnexis, westlaw and others are constantly suing each other for some sort of infringement or violation of agreements to protect their data. granted, these lawsuits are often breach of contract (non-competes in particular) a fair number surround trademark violations as well.
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signalsnatcher, 19 Jan 2010 @ 8:14pm

Compare Apples with Oranges
There is no argument, surely, that researcher should not make their data freely available for peer review or for other esearchers? Free access to data is a fundamental precondition of taking research seriously. But given that don't be surprised if it does get IP rights:

1) from the original article:
>>>and yet when you compare similar database industries in the US to Europe you quickly discover that they're much bigger in the US than in Europe.

One reason is that the European Community has much stricter protection of privacy so business opportunities are fewer.

2)unlike the US, in Europe there is no expectation that if government money was used to collect the data, then it should be publicly available.
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2010 @ 9:28pm
  
  Re: Compare Apples with Oranges
  "unlike the US, in Europe there is no expectation that if government money was used to collect the data, then it should be publicly available."
  
  Just because such an expectation does not exist within the European government and businesses does not mean that such an expectation doesn't exist. It makes intuitive sense that, no matter where you live, if taxpayers pay for the research taxpayers should have access to that research, regardless of what the government or businesses expect.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 19 Jan 2010 @ 9:31pm
    
    Re: Re: Compare Apples with Oranges
    In fact, for governments or businesses to expect anything different is only evidence of their selfish, parasitical harmful nature to society and would be a good argument for citizens to ignore and even abolish their government.
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Anonymous Cow, 20 Jan 2010 @ 2:52am

I'm slighlty horified by the entire notion. The basis of science is peer review. If the data is not available for review, then it can not be verified by peers.
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- Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2010 @ 5:12am
  
  Re:
  and hence the growth of junk science.
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K. Chapman, 20 Jan 2010 @ 4:49am

more incentives to share
More immediate barriers to data sharing (more immediate than applied IPRs for example) include performance measurement instruments that don't recognise open access or lack of budget planning for making data available at proposal stage.
As one of the comments on Jeff's post said "Just don't share it if you don't want to" - no doubt this locks in far more data than formal IPRs would even if it were agreed that academic research could be protected. To encourage data sharing more incentives to do so are required.
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Colin (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 7:10am

I dropped by the blog and read the post. It is a pretty fair discussion, but it srikes me as being a similar type of issue to that of open access to academic journal articles. That being:

1. Was the income earned by the researcher provided in part (in whole?) by the public?
2 Was the research itself funded by the public in any way?

If you can answer yes to either question then the data should be public.

On the claim of protections leading to more research. There seems to be an awful lot of research going on now without protections, so why change anything.
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Sinan Unur (profile), 20 Jan 2010 @ 9:47am

What does the Coase Theorem have to do with this?
The Coase theorem states that, in the absence of transactions costs (e.g. (and possibly i.e.) lawyers), the assignment of property rights (so long as they are well defined) does not matter in terms of the market leading to an efficient level of provision of the good which is the source of the externality.

Except for those intrinsically motivated to investigate some issue, the goal of academics is to get published and get cited. The more frequently cited you are, the better your chances at getting published at better journals and the better your chances of getting cited.

However, in the presence of large amounts of public monies being allocated to an individual discipline, the temptation of forming a monopsony can prove overwhelming. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575010931344004278.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_Above LEFTTop
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sprearson81 (profile), 9 Jun 2012 @ 6:33am

No, it shouldn't
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